Nor could she learn from Mrs. Hennessey. It was impossible to get a word in edgeways with that lady. Sometimes, indeed, during a lull in her mind disturbance, she would remain quiet whilst you answered some question, only to find that she had totally forgotten the question and was not listening to your reply.

Phyl got so used to Mrs. Hennessey after a few days that she did not listen to her questions, and so the two being matched, they got on well together. Young people soon accommodate themselves to their surroundings, and in a month the girl had grown to the colour of her new life, at least, on the outside of her mind. It seemed to her that she had lived years in Merrion Square. Kilgobbin—Hennessey had managed to let the place—seemed a dream of her childhood. She saw no future, and rebellion was impossible; there was nothing to rebel against—except the dulness and greyness of life. No people could have been kinder than the Hennesseys; unfortunately they had numerous friends, and the friends of the Hennesseys did not appeal to Phyl.

A boy in her position would have adapted himself quickly enough, and been hail fellow well met with Mr. Mattram, the dentist of Westland Row, or the young Farrels, whose father owned one of the biggest 70 wine merchants’ businesses in the city; but the feminine instinct told Phyl that these were not the sort of people from whose class she had sprung, that their circle was not her circle and that she had stepped down in life in some mysterious way. This fact was brought sharply home to her by a young Farrel, a male of the Farrel brood, a hobbledehoy, good-looking enough but with a Dublin accent and a cheeky manner.

70

This immature wine merchant at a party given by Mrs. Hennessey had made love to Phyl and had tried to kiss her behind the dining-room door.

The recollection of the smack in the face she had given him soothed her that night as she lay tossing in her bed, and it was on this night and for the first time since she left Kilgobbin that the recollection of Pinckney came before her otherwise than as a shadow. He stood with the Hennessey circle as his background, a bright, good-looking figure and a gentleman to his finger-tips.

Why had she cast aside her own people—even though they were distant relations? What stupidity had caused her to insult Pinckney by telling him she hated him? She found herself asking that question without being able to answer it.

After all that fuss at Kilgobbin 

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