oise issued from Honor's corner. It might, of
course, have been snoring; and Honor explained elaborately next morning
that Irish people often have a peculiar way of breathing in their
sleep--an affection from which she sometimes suffered herself.

"All the same, I don't quite believe her," confided Pauline Reynolds,
who occupied the next cubicle, to Lettice Talbot, a more sympathetic
character than her sister Maisie. "I know what it is to feel home-sick,
and to smother one's nose in the pillow! If that wasn't sobbing, it was
as like it as anything I've ever heard in my life."

CHAPTER II

Honor's Home

For a full understanding of Honor Fitzgerald we must go back a few
weeks, and see her in that Irish home which was so far away and so
utterly different from Chessington College. Kilmore Castle was a great,
rambling, old-fashioned country house, built beside an inland creek of
the sea, and sheltered by a range of hills from the wild winds of
Kerry. To Honor that was the dearest and most beautiful spot in the
world. She loved every inch of it--the silvery strips of water that led
between bold, rocky headlands out to the broad Atlantic; the tall
mountain peaks that showed so rugged an outline against the sky; the
brown, peat-stained river that came brawling down from the uplands, and
poured itself noisily into the creek; the wide, lonely moors, with
their stretches of brilliant green grass and dark, treacherous bog
pools; and the craggy cliffs that made a barrier against the
ever-dashing waves, and round which thousands of sea birds flew, with
harsh cries and whir of white wings.

Its situation at the end of a long peninsula made Kilmore Castle an
isolated little kingdom of its own. On the shore stood a row of low,
fishermen's white-washed cabins, dignified by the name of "the
village"; but otherwise there was no human habitation in sight, and
Ballycroghan, the market town and nearest postal, railway, and
telegraph station, was ten miles off.

Trees were rarities at Kilmore; a few stunted specimens, all blown one
way by the prevailing gale, grew as if huddled together for protection
at the foot of the glen, but they were the exception that proved the
rule; nevertheless, under the sheltering walls of the Castle Mrs.
Fitzgerald had managed to acclimatize some exotic shrubs, and to
cultivate quite a beautiful garden of flowers, for the temperature was
uniformly mild, though the winds were boisterous. Brilliant St