'Oh! of course, but I haven't told mamma, for she is always talking to me about Lord Kilcarney—the little marquis, as she calls him; but I couldn't have him. Just fancy giving up dear Edward! I assure you I believe he would kill himself if I did. He has often told me I am the only thing worth living for.'
Alice looked at her beautiful sister questioningly, her good sense telling her that, if Olive was not intended for him, it was wrong to allow her to continue her flirtation. But for the moment the consideration of her own misfortunes absorbed her. Was there nothing in life for a girl but marriage, and was marriage no more than a sensual gratification; did a man seek nothing but a beautiful body that he could kiss and enjoy? Did a man's desires never turn to mating with one who could sympathize with his hopes, comfort him in his fears, and united by that most profound and penetrating of all unions—that of the soul—be collaborator in life's work? 'Could no man love as she did?' She was ready to allow that marriage owned a material as well as a spiritual aspect, and that neither could be overlooked. Some, therefore, though their souls were as beautiful as the day, were, from purely physical causes, incapacitated from entering into the marriage state. Cecilia was such a one.
'Now what are you thinking about, Alice?'
'I do not know, nothing in particular; one doesn't know always of what one is thinking! Tell me what they are saying downstairs.'
'But I have told you; that Captain Hibbert preferred my hair like this, and I asked you if you thought he was right, but you hardly looked.'
'Yes, I did, Olive; I think the fashion suits you.'
'You won't tell anybody that I told you he kissed me? Oh, I had forgotten about Lord Rosshill; he has been fired at. Lord Dungory returned from Dublin, and he brought the evening paper with him. It is full of bad news.'
'What news?' Alice asked, with a view to escaping from wearying questions; and Olive told her a bailiff's house had been broken into by an armed gang. 'They dragged him out of his bed and shot him in the legs before his own door. And an attempt has been made to blow up a landlord's house with dynamite. And in Queen's County shots have been fired through a dining-room window—now, what else? I am telling you a lot; I don't often remember what is in the paper. No end of hayricks were burnt last week, and some cattle have had their tails cut off, and a great many people have been beaten. Lord Dungory says he doesn't know how it will all end unless the Government bring in a Coercion Act. What do you think, Alice?'
Alice dropped some formal remarks, and Olive hoped that the state of the country would not affect the Castle's season. She didn't know which of the St. Leonard girls would be married first. She asked Alice to guess. Alice said she couldn't guess, and fell to thinking that nobody would ever want to marry her. It was as if some instinct had told her, and she could not drive the word 'celibacy' out of her ears. It seemed to her that she was fichue à jamais, as that odious Lord Dungory would say. She did not remember that she had ever been so unhappy before, and it seemed to her that she would always be unhappy, fichue à jamais.
But to her surprise she awoke in a more cheerful mood, and when she came down to breakfast Mr. Barton raised his head from the newspaper and asked her if she had heard that Lord Rosshill had been fired at.