ept her quiet,
and Phyl, nothing loath, spent most of her time now in shops, Tod and
Burns, and Cannock and White's, examining patterns and being fitted,
varying these amusements by farewell visits. She was invited out by all
the Hennesseys' friends, the Farrels and the Rourkes, and the Longs and
the Newlands, and the Pryces and the Oldhams, all prepared tea-parties in
her honour, made her welcome, and made much of her, just as we make much
of people who have not long to live.

She was the girl that was going to America. She did not appreciate the
real kindness underlying this terrible round of festivities till she was
standing on the deck of the _Hybernia_ at Kingstown saying good-bye to
Hennessey.

Then, as the boat drew away from the Carlisle pier, as it passed the
guardship anchorage and the batteries at the ends of the east and west
piers, all those people from whom she had longed to escape seemed to her
the most desirable people on earth.

Bound for a world unknown, peopled with utter strangers, Ireland, beloved
Ireland, called after her as a mother calls to her child.

Oh, the loneliness! the desolation!

As she stood watching the Wicklow mountains fading in the grey distance,
she knew for the first time the meaning of those words, "Gone West"; and
she knew what the thousands suffered who, driven from their cabins on the
hillside or the moor, went West in the old days when the emigrant ship
showed her tall masts in Queenstown Harbour and her bellying canvas to the
sunset of the Atlantic.

At Liverpool, she found Mrs. Van Dusen, a tall, rather good-looking,
rather hard-looking but exceedingly fashionable individual, at the hotel
where it was arranged they should meet.

Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel and dumb from dejection,
had little in common with this lady, nor did a rough passage across the
Atlantic extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van Dusen
scarcely appeared from her state-room till the evening when, the great
ship coming to her moorings, New York sketched itself and its blazing
skyscrapers against the gloom before the astonished eyes of Phyl.

PART II

CHAPTER I

Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of these stopping places had impressed
upon Phyl the distance she was putting between herself and her home,
making her feel that if this business was not death it was, at least, a
very good imitation of dying.

But the south-bound express from New York was to