The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting the idea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because the idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter of fact, she was fond enough of the girl.

“It’s what’s left Ireland what it is,” went on the good lady. “Cripples and lunatics, that’s all that’s left of us with your emigration; all the good blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely, coming back.”

“I’ll come back,” said Phyl, “you need not fear about that—some day.”

“Ay, some day,” said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then the spirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and people vanished.

Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of the family, only his genius “stuck in him somehow and wouldn’t come out.” She passed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and only stopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper was ready.

Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, as though it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her full consent and approval.

During the weeks following, Phyl’s impending journey kept Mrs. Hennessey busy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations and lists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guinea or some region equally destitute of shops.

Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have her way—it kept 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.