As for the newspapers, nothing could be gleaned from them. So soon as a paper became popular, it was acquired by money or threats (with the exception of Tom Emmett's, which ran its rigs unchecked), and patriotism gave way to padding. There was little Irish intelligence. The Dublin prints might as well have been edited at Sierra Leone; and Doreen turned with impatience from their dulness. She received few letters herself, for there was no one to write to her except the proscribed, and, of course, it would not do for treasonable correspondence to pass through the hands of Lord Glandore, who amused himself by sailing to Rathmelton for the bag. There was no convenient shebeen here, where notes might cunningly be dropped; no useful Biddy or Jug Coyle--not even a handy cabin; for, whilst the peasantry round Dublin were one and all ready to do anything for the cause, those of Ennishowen cared not about it. And she was not sorry for this. With the French fiasco her hopes had melted--she knew too well the discordant elements which composed the Irish Directory. All that had kept its members together had been the expectation of French assistance--now that that was over they would fall asunder, and Cinderella would sit down again amongst the ashes. And was it not indeed better so? The wrath of God was kindled, for some reason which she knew not, against unhappy motherland. Was it not better, then, that her sons should accept their bondage with meekness rather than waste their blood uselessly? Doreen's contentment sprang in the first instance from the nipping of despair. A moment comes to us in our sore trouble, when we fold our arms and murmur, 'By God's mercy there is a limit to the sense of feeling. We have reached that limit, and will feel no more;' and, strange as it may seem, with that resolve comes an impression of calm, which, in its way, is a sort of negative happiness. We have lost something, we are bereft of something which above all things we valued, yet we seem vaguely better for the loss. It is like the expression of peace which all blind faces wear, though their most precious treasure has been stolen--the sense of sight. Doreen shrank from probing her own feelings with regard to Terence. Certainly his conduct distressed her more than seemed warranted by circumstances. She did not love him. No, not so bad as that, happily. She liked him as a fond sister might like a brother many years her junior, with a good-humoured satisfaction when he did well--for instance, when he made a splendid leap out hunting, or a particularly felicitous shot with his gun; and a feeling of pained displeasure when he did ill. And she told herself that he had behaved very ill, so ill that the fact of his existence must be erased from the tablets of her memory. That he should prove to be so double-dyed a traitor, so despicable and dastardly a schemer, filled her soul with horror.