He saw, as he looked at her, how very gray her eyes were, and how very deep--like orifices through which light shone--and how very steady. He noticed that her mouth was firm, and that she seemed to have lived each instant of her twenty-seven years; and still she was a woman with the first flush of beauty on her. She turned away to talk to his mother and he saw for the first time that her servant-girl was with her. So engrossed had he been with her entry, and so shocked by seeing her beauty, that he had seen only her. "I 'm going to have the flax pulled on the ten-acre," she was saying--and Grant felt every syllable of her low contralto strike him clear and compelling--"so I 'm asking the neighbors fair and early. My father 's dead, Willie John--" she turned to Grant for a moment--"and I 've the place on my hands." "Ay; I heard that, Eunice," he said. "I was sorry to hear it." "You 'll be going back soon?" she asked. "I 'll be going back very soon now," he said. "In a couple of weeks at most." "I 've been wanting him to stay and settle down," his father broke in; "but there 's no use talking to him." "Ah, there's nothing for a man here," he answered disgustedly. "It's on the other side a man gets his chance--ay, and a woman, too, for that matter." "Is that so?" Eunice uttered; and she caught him with her serious gray eyes. "There was Joe Carragher's daughter, from Balleek," he instanced; "you knew her well. She went over six years ago and now she 's a lady's maid in one of the big houses on Fifth Avenue. A grand position!" "Is that so?" she repeated; her eyes had narrowed a little and she was studying him intently. "Then there was Patrick Hagan, the brother of the captain in the Dublin Fusiliers. He 's got a saloon on Third Avenue and does a grand business." "That's the devil's business, Willie John," his mother said quietly. It was the first time since he came back that he had seen her without a smile on her lips. "It's different on the other side, I tell you," Grant commented with asperity. "And there's Barney Doyle, that went over before me; he 's head waiter in one of the big places on Broadway. Do you know that fellow makes as much as seventy dollars a week in tips? Seventy dollars! Fourteen pounds!" "His father was a great lawyer." Old Grant shook his head. "God be good to him! They called him the Star of the North." "Fourteen pounds a week--in tips!" Grant thought he could detect a chill, contemptuous tone in the Doran girl's voice; but he put the thought out of his head, for why should she be contemptuous? She drew her blue cloak about her. "I think I 'll be going," she said. "I 'll leave you a bit of the road," Grant offered.