Being all St. Leonard's girls, the conversation immediately turned on
convent-life. 'Was Madam this there? Had Madam that left?' Garden
chapel, school, hall, dormitory, refectory were visited; every nun was
passed in review, and, in the lightness and gaiety of the memories
invoked, even these maiden ladies flushed and looked fresh again, the
conversation came to a pause, and then allusion was made to the
disturbed state of the country, and to a gentleman who, it was reported,
was going to be married. But, as Alice did not know the person whose
antecedents were being called into question, she took an early
opportunity of asking Gladys if she cared for riding? 'No, they never
went to ride now: they used to, but they came in so fatigued that they
could not talk to Emily; so they had given up riding.' Did they care for
driving? 'Yes, pretty well; but there was no place to drive to except
into Gort, and as people had been unjust enough to say that they were
always to be seen in Gort, they had given up driving--unless, of course,
they went to call on friends.' Then tea was brought in; and, apropos of
a casual reference to conventual buttered toast, the five girls talked,
until nearly six o'clock, of their girlhood--of things that would never
have any further influence in their lives, of happiness they would never
experience again. At last Alice and Cecilia pleaded that they must be
going home.

As they walked across the fields the girls only spoke occasionally.
Alice strove to see clear, but her thoughts were clouded, scattered,
diffused. Force herself as she would, still no conclusion seemed
possible; all was vague and contradictory. She had talked to these
Brennans, seen how they lived, could guess what their past was, what
their future must be. In that neat little house their uneventful life
dribbled away in maiden idleness; neither hope nor despair broke the
triviality of their days--and yet, was it their fault? No; for what
could they do if no one would marry them?--a woman could do nothing
without a husband.

There is a reason for the existence of a pack-horse, but none for that
of an unmarried woman. She can achieve nothing--she has no duty but, by
blotting herself out, to shield herself from the attacks of
ever-slandering friends. Alice had looked forward to a husband and a
home as the certain accomplishment of years; now she saw that a woman,
independently of her own will, may remain single.

'I wonder,' she sa