'Sick of everything?' said Mrs. Barton, laughing. 'Why, my dear child, you have tasted nothing yet. Wait until we get to the Castle; you'll see what a lot of Captain Hibberts there will be after this pretty face; that's to say if you don't spoil it in the meantime with fretting.' 'But, mamma,' she said, 'how can I help thinking of him?--there's nothing to do here, one never hears of anything but that horrid Land League--whether the Government will or will not help the landlords, whether Paddy So-and-so will or will not pay his rent. I am sick of it. Milord comes to see you, and Alice likes reading-books, and papa has his painting; but I have nothing since you sent Captain Hibbert away.' 'Yes, yes, my beautiful Olive flower, it is a little dull for you at present, and to think that this wicked agitation should have begun the very season you were coming out! Who could have foreseen such a thing? But come, my pet, I cannot allow you to ruin your beautiful complexion with foolish tears; you must get up; unfortunately I can't have you in the drawing-room, I have to talk business with Milord, but you can go out for a walk with Alice--it isn't raining to-day.' 'Oh! no; I couldn't go out to walk with Alice, it would bore me to death. She never talks about anything that interests me.' Vanished the sweet pastel-like expression of Mrs. Barton's features, lost in a foreseeing of the trouble this plain girl would be. Partners would have to be found, and to have her dragging after her all through the Castle season would be intolerable. And all these airs of virtue, and injured innocence, how insupportable they were! Alice, as far as Mrs. Barton could see, was fit for nothing. Even now, instead of helping to console her sister, and win her thoughts away from Captain Hibbert, she shut herself up to read books. Such a taste for reading and moping she had never seen in a girl before--_voilà un type de vieille fille_. Whom did she take after? Certainly not after her mother, nor yet her father. But what was the good of thinking of the tiresome girl? There were plenty of other things far more important to consider, and the first thing of all was--how to make Olive forget Captain Hibbert? On this point Mrs. Barton was not quite satisfied with the manner in which she had played her part. Olive's engagement had been broken off by too violent means, and nothing was more against her nature than (to use her own expression) _brusquer les choses_. Early in life Mrs. Barton discovered that she could amuse men, and since then she had devoted herself assiduously to the cultivation of this talent, and the divorce between herself and her own sex was from the first complete. She not only did not seek to please, but she made no attempt to conceal her aversion from the society of women, and her preference for those forms of entertainment where they were found in fewest numbers. Balls were, therefore, never much to her taste; at the dinner-table she was freer,