In despair at her own helplessness, and with a feeling of loathing so strong that it seemed like physical sickness, Alice went forward and entered into conversation with Captain Hibbert.  Lord Dungory, Mrs. Barton, and Olive walked together; Lady Jane and Lady Sarah followed at a little distance.  In this order the party proceeded down the avenue as far as the first gate; then they returned by a side-walk leading through the laurels, and stood in a line facing the wind-worn tennis-ground, with its black, flowerless beds, and bleak vases of alabaster and stone.  From time to time remarks anent the Land League were made; but all knew that a drama even as important as that of rent was being enacted.  Olive had joined her sister, and the girls moved forward on either side of the handsome Captain; and, as a couple of shepherds directing the movements of their flock, Lord Dungory and Mrs. Barton stood watching.  Suddenly her eyes met Lady Jane’s.  The glance exchanged was tempered in the hate of years; it was vindictive, cruel, terrible; it shone as menacingly as if the women had drawn daggers from their skirts, and Jane, obeying a sudden impulse, broke away from her sister, and called to Captain Hibbert.  Fortunately he did not hear her, and, before she could speak again, Lord Dungory said: 

‘Jane, now, Jane, I beg of you—­’

Mrs. Barton smiled a sweet smile of reply, and whispered to herself: 

‘Do that again, my lady, and you won’t have a penny to spend this year.’

‘And now, dear, tell me, I want to hear all about it,’ said Mrs. Barton, as the carriage left the steps of Dungory Castle.  ‘What did he say?’

‘Oh! mamma, mamma, I am afraid I have broken his heart,’ replied Olive dolorously.

’It doesn’t do a girl any harm even if it does leak out that she jilted a man; it makes the others more eager after her.  But tell me, dear, I hope there was no misunderstanding; did you really tell him that it was no use, that he must think of you no more?’

’Mamma dear, don’t make me go over it again, I can’t, I can’t; Alice heard all I said—­she’ll tell you,’

‘No, no, don’t appeal to me; it’s no affair of mine,’ exclaimed the girl more impetuously than she had intended.

’I am surprised at you, Alice; you shouldn’t give way to temper like that.  Come, tell me at once what happened.’

The thin, grey, moral eyes of the daughter and the brown, soft, merry eyes of the mother exchanged a long deep gaze of inquiry, and then Alice burst into an uncontrollable fit of tears.  She trembled from too much grief, and could not answer; and when she heard her mother say to Olive, ’Now that the coast is clear, we can go in heart and soul for the marquess,’ she shuddered inwardly and wished she might stay at home in Galway and be spared the disgrace of the marriage-market.

XV