She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set, her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was branded.
The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them. The relatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor, rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is the dry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, but no one was proud of them.
If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst his own class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter’s rescue now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, an easy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and cottage folk, caring little for the convenances and with no taste for women’s society.
Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which were only half understood, filled the mind of the girl as she lay awake with the noise of that raucous party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it was only to awake with a sense of despondency weighing upon her and the odious Farrel incident waiting to follow her through the day.
About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found a letter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address, Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, written in a firm, bold hand.
Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey had departed for the office, so Phyl had the breakfast table to herself—and the letter.
She knew at once whom it was from, even before she read the postmark, “Charleston.”
Pinckney, the man who had been in her thoughts during the past six or seven days, the man who had left Ireland righteously disgusted with her, the man to whom she had said, “I hate you!”
The scene flashed before her as she tore the envelope open, his sudden blaze of anger, the way he had torn the papers up, his departure. What was he going to say to her now? She flushed at the thought that this thing in her hand might prove to be his opinion of her in cold blood, a reproof, a remonstrance—she opened the folded sheet—ah!
“Dear Phyl,