Lady O'Gara had often wondered,—she had been wondering, wondering, during the last few days—how they should greet each other, what should be the first words to pass between them. The half-dreaded, half-looked-for moment had come, and the greeting was of the tritest.

"We have arrived, you see," said Mrs. Comerford. "We caught the Irish Mail last night instead of staying the night in London."

"Oh,—did no one meet you?"

"We left the luggage and came up on Farrell's car. It was Farrell's car, just as muddy and disreputable as I remember it. It was driven by old Johnny's son. I am sorry Johnny is dead. Perhaps the car is not the same—but there is nothing to choose between that and the old one."

The meeting had taken place. The great moment had come and gone: and there was Aunt Grace talking about Farrell's car as though all that lay between them had been but a dream.

Lady O'Gara's eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Ah, you are tired," she said with soft tenderness, "you are tired!"

The change the years had wrought in the tall handsome woman who had been queenly to her young mind overwhelmed her. She forgot the dread she had had of the meeting, which had destroyed any happy anticipation. "Come and sit down," she said. "Let me help you off with your cloak. You will have breakfast? What a long journey for you!"

Mrs. Comerford allowed herself to be put into the softest of the easy chairs. A look of gratification, of pleasure, came to her face. She allowed Lady O'Gara to take off her hat and long travelling cloak, to unlace her shoes.

"You were always a kind creature," she said, "and it is nice to be home again. How beautiful the cloudy skies are! Many and many a time during those years I have wanted grey skies. I've been sick even for a whole wet day. Do you think, Mary, that if we Westerners get to Heaven we will want a wet day now and again?"

So the old resentment had gone. How strange it was after all the grief and estrangement to have Aunt Grace talking like this. It encouraged Lady O'Gara, sitting on the floor at Mrs. Comerford's feet, to pat the foot from which she had drawn off the shoe, with a tender furtive caress.

"You'd better get up, Mary. I hear Clinch coming. You have hardly changed from the girl of twenty-five years ago. Of course you are plumper, more matronly. You have a boy of twenty-one."

Clinch came in with the bag, followed by Mrs. Clinch with a tea-tray, smiling broadly.

"The young lady said she'd have a bath before her breakfast, ma'am," she said, and there was a radiance about her old face which had not been there for many a day.

"Breakfast—we had breakfast in the train. Miss Stella cannot want breakfast." Mrs. Comerford smiled as she said it. "She made a very good breakfast in the train."

"She's young and the young want food. 'Tis a good day that's in it, ma'am, to see you home again—with such a beautiful young lady too. She'll make the house lively. The first thing she did was to fling her arms about Shot's neck,—Lady O'Gara's dog, ma'am. For all he's a proud, stand-off dog, he licked her face."

"Now, don't spoil Miss Stella. Every one spoils her, so I suppose there's no use expecting you to be the exception."

"She brings her love with her," said Mrs. Clinch. "She's so delighted with all she sees, and making friends with every one. They'll be won over by her: even old Tom Kane will give her the key of his garden, as he calls it, before she's an hour in the place. She'll be into his strawberry beds that he's so jealous about, you'll see."

Mrs. Clinch went off. Lady O'Gara poured out a cup of tea, remembering, over all the years, that Mrs. Comerford liked only a little sugar. She found her slippers and put them on and brought a footstool for feet to rest upon. She was thinking that this Stella, the young adopted daughter, explained the change in the woman before her. Mrs. Comerford had grown much softer. She was still a remarkable-looking woman, the wreck of stately beauty. In her black garments, which fell about her in flowing lines, she had the air of a priestess. Her age showed in her thinness, which was almost emaciation, and her face was wrinkled and heavily lined. Yet her smile was more ready than Lady O'Gara remembered and her eyes quieter. They had been very blue eyes once upon a time—her son had had such blue eyes—now, they had faded almost to lavender, and they were almost gentle. Yet there was something in the face, some suggestion of burnt-out fires, which forbade the idea of a gentle nature, and the lips were too thin for softness.

"Am I a wreck, Mary?" she asked. "Yes, I know I am. Some one took me for a Duchess the other day, addressing me as 'Your Grace.' Italy has dried up my skin. It will hardly revive at my time of life. But I am happy: you cannot imagine how Stella makes for happiness. Stella and age between them have broken me down. A child could play with me."

She laughed as she said it. Grace Comerford had not laughed much in the old days. Mary had adored her, with an adoration tinged with awe. She had always felt in those days that it would be an awful thing to offend Aunt Grace. She had offended her and it had been awful.

"I am longing to see Stella," she said.

"She is very joyous. I was becoming morose when I found her—like a rogue elephant. I was wrong, Mary, to make such a grievance of your marriage. You were a good child to me, and you would have pleased me if you could. I know better now than to be angry with you for caring more for Shawn O'Gara than for my son. You should have told me at the time. You shouldn't have let me believe that you cared for Terence. Was I an ogre? Perhaps I was. I must have been."

"I wanted to please you dreadfully in those days. You had been everything to me."

"You and Terence were everything to me. Still—I should not have been so unreasonable as to expect you to marry Terence to please me when you liked Shawn O'Gara better. I ought to have known that love does not grow up like that. You and Terence were almost brother and sister."

"Yes," said Lady O'Gara. "We were so used to each other. I was eighteen when I first saw Shawn and we fell in love at first sight." She blushed, with a startling effect of youth. "Terence and I were like brother and sister. It would not have worked. We were very fond of each other, but no more than that. You were wrong when you thought Terence would have cared."

She had expected some disclaimer, remembering Mrs. Comerford's bitter anger because her son had been supplanted by his friend, even while he was yet in the world; but no disclaimer came.

"Yes, I was wrong. I see it now. I ought to have come back long ago and said I was wrong. I could not bring myself to do it, and—there were other reasons. It is very good to come back and to see you so bonny, Mary, and to feel that we may live in love and peace as long as I am here."

She drank her tea and looked round the room, with a sigh as though her heart rested on what she saw.

"You have made the old room very sweet, Mary," she went on, "and you have remembered my tastes. Dear me, see those old things on the chimney-piece! Those crockery dogs,—how fond Terence was of them when he was a child! And that piece of agate, and the Rockingham lambs! I had almost forgotten them."

"You, had better come over to Castle Talbot to lunch," Lady O'Gara said. "I want you to see my boy. He has just passed out of Sandhurst."

"A soldier? How strange that I should have had to ask! I left your letters unanswered, but I always read them. That was how I knew that you had called your boy after my son."

"Yes, Terence has chosen to be a soldier, for some years, at least. There is not very much doing now. After a few years his father thinks he might take to politics."

"I want to see him. And I want you to see my girl."

She glanced towards the door as though she expected it to open.

"Eileen Creagh is with us. You remember her father, Anthony Creagh. He came here once or twice in old days. She has lived with us for a long time. Terry was always at school. It would have been lonely for me without Eileen."

"Yes, I remember I did not like Anthony Creagh because I thought he came for your sake. He married a fair girl, very unlike you. I've forgotten her name."

"Eileen is very pretty, like her mother. Beautiful soft silver-gold hair and greyish blue eyes: she is very gentle."

"Characterless?"

Lady O'Gara smiled ever so slightly. "Oh, she has character, I think."

"No one will look at her when Stella is by. You will see. She has no animation; I know her kind. By the way, you have Patsy Kenny still with you? You told me about Patsy in the letters I did not answer."

"Still with us. He is an institution—like the Shots. I have a Shot still—the great-grandson of old Shot. I don't know what we should do without Patsy. He has such a wonderful way with the horses,—with all animals, indeed."

"He'll adore Stella. She's so fearless with animals. Many a fright she gave me when she was a child. But the animals, even when they were savage with others, never hurt her. There was an awful day when we found her with the boarhound puppies at Prince Valetti's Villa in her arms, and the mother looking on well-pleased. She was a savage brute to other people. The Prince was ready to shoot her if she had turned nasty with Stella: but there was no occasion. Stella scrambled through the barrier when we called her name."

"Is she like a French girl?"

"No: why should she be?"

"I suppose I was wrong. I thought she was the child of Gaston de St. Maur, who used to visit us here."

"Her mother was Irish," Mrs. Comerford said.

"And she is like her mother?"

Before Mrs. Comerford could answer there came a knocking as of knuckles on the door.

"Come in, my darling," Mrs. Comerford said, her face lighting up.

A charming girlish face looked in at the open door.

"May I? Is it Lady O'Gara whom my dearest Mamma so greatly loves?"

There was the slightest foreign intonation in the voice,—something of deliberate utterance, as though English was not the language of the speaker.

The girl came into the room and towards them. She was charming. Her hair curled in rings of reddish brown on her little head. Her eyes were grey with something of brown in the iris: her eyebrows strongly marked. She had a straight beautiful little nose, lips softly opening, a chin like that of the Irish poet's "Mary Donnelly," "round as a china cup." There was something softly graceful about her as she came into the room. She looked down, then up again. Her eyes,—were they grey? They were brown surely, almost gold. Her little head was held as though she courted a caress.

"I am so glad you have come back, Stella," Lady O'Gara said, fascinated straight off by this charming vision.

"I wonder how Mamma stayed away so long," Stella returned. "The sweet house, the beautiful grey country." She took Lady O'Gara's hand and kissed it lightly; yet with an air of reverence,—"the beloved people."

"The country will not prove too grey for you, I hope, Stella," Lady O'Gara said, feeling touched and pleased by the girl's air of homage. "My husband's mother, who was an Italian, said that the grey skies made her weep when first she came to Ireland. They were so unlike Italian skies."

"I must be Irish then," said the girl, "for I adore them. Even when it rains I shall not weep."

"She has something of your colouring, Mary; don't you think so?" Mrs. Comerford asked.

"Yes, perhaps—more golden."

She was feeling surprised at herself. This girl made more appeal to her than Eileen Creagh whom she had had with her from childhood. This girl touched some motherly chord in her which Eileen had never awakened. She wanted to stroke her dear curls, to be good to her. Yet she had been telling herself all those years, that she had no need for a daughter, having Terry.



CHAPTER VII

BRADY'S BULL

The meeting between Eileen Creagh and Stella Comerford brought the flying dimple to Lady O'Gara's cheek. She watched them as though they were young children meeting in the shy yet uncompromising atmosphere of the nursery.

Stella was inclined to be friendly and then drew back, chilled by something she detected in Eileen's manner. Eileen was indifferently polite.

Terry and his father were out when the party arrived for luncheon, but they returned very soon afterwards. Lady O'Gara's attention was otherwise absorbed so that she did not notice the sudden delighted friendliness in Terry towards Stella nor the quick withdrawal into sullenness which spoilt Eileen's looks for the luncheon-hour.

Lady O'Gara was wondering about her husband. Why should he have looked so startled when his eye fell on Stella? He had known that she was coming. To Lady O'Gara's anxious eye Sir Shawn looked pale. He had been pale of late, with curious shadows about his face, but when she had asked him if he was not feeling well he had answered with an air of lightness that he felt as well as ever he had felt.

At the luncheon table he sat with his back to the light. The persistence of those shadows in his face worried her loving heart. She wondered if Mrs. Comerford saw a great change in him. It ought to have been a very happy occasion. Mrs. Comerford had met Shawn with an air of affection mingled with deprecation, as though she asked pardon for the old unreason. If she saw that the years had changed him she made no sign.

"I have stayed away a long time from you and Mary," she said. "I had made it difficult for myself to come back: but I have wanted to come back. Now I hope we shall remain neighbours to the end."

Sir Shawn had not responded as he ought to have done. He had worn a queer look. After a while his wife had found the proper adjective for it: his eyes were haunted. He might have seen a ghost. It distracted her from her talk across the table with Mrs. Comerford, happy talk of friends long parted and re-united, full of "Don't you remember?" and "Have you forgotten?": arrears of talk in which so much had to be explained, so many fates elucidated. It might have been so happy if only Shawn had not worn that odd look.

Once Lady O'Gara thought she caught his eyes fixed with a gloomy intentness on the group of young people at the other end of the table. She glanced that way, and the ready smile came. Terry was making himself very agreeable to the two pretty girls. It was obvious, even at a glance, that Eileen had little chance against the new-comer's vivacity. She sat with her lips pursed a little and something of gloom on her face. Terry, between his sallies with Stella, who was at once shy and bright, full of those charming glances out of the eyes which were grey at one moment, golden brown at another,—sent now and again a tenderly apologetic look Eileen's way, trying to draw the sulking beauty into the conversation. There was nothing for Shawn to be gloomy about in this little comedy. Terry was always so sweetly amiable.

In the days that followed the comedy unfolded itself. Stella was very often at Castle Talbot, or they were at Inch. Terry was evidently drawn towards Stella, while loyally endeavouring to keep up his former attitude towards Eileen. If Eileen wished to keep him she went the worst possible way about it, for she sulked, and sulkiness did not become her. Her fair skin took on a leaden look. She repulsed Stella's advances till Stella was hurt and vexed.

"Eileen will not be friends with me," she complained to Lady O'Gara. "She is so cold. That lovely pale hair of hers I took it in my hands one day when it was undone, and it was cold as ice. Her heart is like her hair. Why will she not like me?"

Why not, indeed? Apart from the fact that Stella chattered, pretty chatter like the singing of a bird, and was so quickly intelligent about everything, and so interested in the new life that the slower Eileen was rather left out of things, her attitude towards Eileen was most disarming. She admired her greatly and was evidently quite unaware of her own good looks. She tried to win her over with gifts, which Eileen accepted, while she was not propitiated.

"She will not like me," Stella complained with a flash of tears in her eyes, "if I was to give her my heart she would not like me."

"You should not have given her your seed-pearls," said Lady O'Gara. "It is too valuable a gift to pass from one girl to another."

It was beginning to dawn on her that Eileen was greedy and selfish. Perhaps she had had intuitions of it when Eileen had disappointed her. Eileen was only friendly to Stella when she wanted something. Once she had obtained it she relapsed into her former coldness. Lady O'Gara realized that Eileen had always been greedy. She had laid Terry under heavy toll for small attentions and such gifts as he might give her. Eileen's incessant eating of chocolate had made Lady O'Gara wonder how she could give so good an account of herself at meal-times. She smoked—it was a new fashion of which Lady O'Gara did not altogether approve—a cigarette now and again and Terry supplied the gold-tipped, scented kind which Eileen took from a cigarette case of platinum with her name in turquoise at the corner. The cigarette case was a new possession. Lady O'Gara supposed that it came from Terry. She had not asked. A violet scent, so good that on its first introduction Lady O'Gara had cried out that some one was wearing wet violets, now always heralded Miss Creagh's coming into a room.

There were some things which had not come from Terry. When Lady O'Gara had noticed them Eileen had said carelessly that they were given her by Robin Gillespie, the son of the doctor at Inver, and a doctor himself in the Indian Army. Anthony Creagh and his wife had an overflowing quiverful. Lady O'Gara made excuses for the girl who must have had it in her blood to do without. Still, Robin Gillespie, the doctor's son at Inver, could not have much to spare, but apparently he had given Eileen a good many trinkets.

"When does Terry join his regiment?" Sir Shawn asked his wife one day with a certain sharpness.

"Not till September."

"And it is now August. A pity he should waste his time philandering."

"Does he philander?"

Lady O'Gara's voice had a hurt sound in it. She found nothing amiss in her one child.

"He philandered with Eileen till Stella came. Now apparently he inclines to Stella. He mustn't play fast and loose with girls."

"It sounds so ugly, Shawn. Terry is incapable of such a thing,—as incapable as you yourself. He is not the flirting sort. He is just a simple boy."

There was something piteous in her voice.

Her husband lifted her face by the chin till he looked down into her eyes.

"If he were like me he would only have one love," he said. "You made your own of me, Mary, altogether, from the first moment I saw you."

Stella had made friends with every one round about her. She was in and out of the cottages. She knew all about the old people's ailments and nursed all the children. Eileen complained with a fastidious disgust that Stella did not seem to know whether the children were dirty or clean. She kissed and hugged them all the same. In likewise she loved and petted the animals and so commended herself hugely to Patsy Kenny.

"She's worth twenty of Miss Eileen," he said. "All I'm afeard of is she'll run herself into danger. She doesn't know what fear is. She ups and says to me the other day whin I bid her not make too free with the mares that the only rayson the crathurs ever was wicked was that men wasn't good to them."

"I've heard you say the same yourself, Mr. Kenny," said Susan Horridge, over the half-door of whose lodge he was leaning. He often paid Susan a visit in this uncomfortable fashion, refusing a chair in the kitchen or even one outside.

"So you have," Patsy acknowledged, and made as if to go; but lingered to ask what Mrs. Horridge thought of Miss Stella.

"I like fair hair best myself," he said, with a shy glance at Susan's hair, neatly braided around a face that began to have soft, even plump, contours once more.

"Miss Eileen has a lovely head of hair," Susan acknowledged.

"And yet," said Patsy, "Miss Stella's my choice. Did you ever take notice of her side-face? It's the purtiest, softest thing I ever seen. I think I seen somethin' like it wance, but where I disremimber."

"Which of the young ladies is Mr. Terry sweet on, Mr. Kenny?"

"Bedad, I don't know, ma'am." Patsy scratched his head. "I wouldn't be sure he's not sweet on the two o' them."

A day came when the two girls, crossing the fields by a short cut, found themselves face to face with a very fine bull. They had not noticed him till they came quite near him. Their path wound round by a little wood which, since it belonged to the paddock of the mares, was surrounded by high hurdles. The bull must have broken into the field, for he had no right to be there. The piece of rope hanging from his neck showed that he had escaped from bondage.

The path curved gently by the edges of the coppice. They came upon the bull unawares. He was grazing when they first saw him, his fine curled head half-buried in the long grass.

"It is Brady's bull," Eileen said in a whisper. "He is not to be trusted. And—he sees your red cloak."

The bull lifted his head and stared at them. Eileen had slipped behind Stella and had begun to retreat backwards.

The bull stamped with his foot and emitted a low roar. Stella did not seem to feel afraid. She kept her eye steadily on the bull. The day was chilly and Lady O'Gara had wrapped the girls up in Connemara cloaks of red and blue flannel. She had put the blue one about Eileen's shoulders, remarking that it matched her eyes.

"Run, Eileen, run," Stella said quietly without taking her eyes from the bull. "Keep the gate open for me."

Eileen ran with a will, never looking back to see what was happening.

Stella took off the red cloak. The bull had put his head to the earth as though about to charge. He roared, a roar that seemed to shake the ground. As he came on she flung the offending garment on to his horns and stepped to one side.

She did not wait to see the result. She could run like Atalanta. It was a pretty good sprint to the gate, which closed and opened by an iron switch. As she ran, the roars of the bull followed her. He was rending Lady O'Gara's Connemara cloak. Presently he would discover that the perpetrator of this outrage upon his dignity was yet in sight.

She was some distance from the gate when she heard the thudding of the bull behind her. For a second or two she did not discover that Eileen was not holding the gate open for her. It was apparently shut to. Would she have time to open it before the bull came up! The switch, which was new, took some pressure to move. Would she have time?

She had just a wild hope that Eileen might have left the gate unfastened. She flung herself against it. No, the switch had fallen into its place: there was no time, no time even to climb the gate. The bull was upon her with a rush. She felt the wind of his approach. She closed her eyes and clung to the gate. Her mind was never clearer. She saw herself trampled and gored, flung in the air and to earth again a helpless thing for the bull to wreak his wrath upon.

Suddenly there was a shout, close at hand, almost at her ear. Something hurtled through the air, a stone flung with an unerring aim which struck the bull in the forehead. The gate opened with her and she felt herself drawn through the opening while the switch fell with a sharp click.

"I say, that was a near thing!" said Terry O'Gara. "You're not going to faint, are you? Just look at that chap tearing up my old football blazer. Thank God, it isn't you."

"Where is Eileen?" she asked. "She was terribly frightened."

"I know," he answered, somewhat grimly. "I dare say she has done a faint. I left her over there by the stile. She was sitting down, recovering herself. Lucky I heard the roars of the bull and was so close at hand. I suppose it was Eileen who shut the gate. She made some sort of explanation, but there was no time to listen. What a fright you've had, you poor child!"

The bull, having reduced the blazer to rags like the Connemara cloak, had trotted away and was grazing quietly, some of the tattered pieces still hanging to his horns, with an odd effect of absurdity.

"I never thought an animal could be so alarming," said Stella.

"You must be more careful in future," he answered. "Not that I want you to be afraid—like Eileen. This brute had no business here. He must have broken through the hedge. He might have got into the foals' paddock. There's a way in for anything very determined where the water runs in that far ditch."

"Oh, I'm glad he didn't get in among the pretty foals."

"It would have been a horrible thing, but better the foals than you."

He looked at her with a simple boyish tenderness. There was something childish about her beauty, something boyish about the slight figure and the curly head, borne out by her frank gaze.

"I wish I had killed the brute," he said, with a vengeful glance in the direction of the quietly-feeding bull.

"You probably cut him with that stone, poor beast."

"Yes: it had a good sharp edge. How lucky I found it just there!"

He noticed that she turned very pale. Quickly his arm went round her to give her support.

"You poor little thing!" he said. "I am so sorry. Are you better now?"

The colour came back to her face. She withdrew gently from his arm.

"I am all right," she said. "It was splendid how you came to my rescue."

Her frank eyes thanked him in a way he found bewildering. He was very goodly in his flannels, with his alert slender darkness and his bright eyes, softened now as his gaze rested upon her.

"It won't make you afraid?" he asked anxiously. "I mean, of course, you must be cautious; but any one would be afraid of Brady's bull. Don't be timid like Eileen, who screams if a foal trots up to her, and is afraid even of Shot."

He had quite forgotten the time when he had found Eileen's timidity pleasing.

"Oh, I shall not be afraid of Shot, or the foals," she said, and laughed. "After all," she lifted her eyes to him as though she asked for pardon—"any one might be afraid of a bull. I'm not a coward for that."

"Of course you're not," he answered, with a sound in his voice as though she was very pleasant to him. "Bulls are treacherous brutes."

They went back slowly to where Eileen sat watching their approach gloomily.

"Well!" she said. "You've been a long time. Wasn't that a horrid brute? I never ran such danger in my life before."

"Stella ran a greater because you had taken care to slam the gate after you," Terry said, with young condemning eyes. "I was only just in time to save her from that brute."

"Oh well, I was frightened. I only thought of getting away as far as I could from him. I shan't walk in the fields again in a hurry. If it isn't horses, it's bulls."

Eileen's face kept its unbecoming gloom on the homeward way, even though she pressed very close to Terry for protection whenever they came near the feeding horses, or one of them trotted up to be petted and stroked. She knew she was disapproved of, and the knowledge was unpleasant to her, although it did not cause her any searchings of conscience. Eileen always took the line of least resistance, as her clever sister, Paula, who was a B.A. of Dublin University, had said.



CHAPTER VIII

SIR SHAWN SEES A GHOST

"There's a blast o' talk goin' through the place like an earthquake," said Patsy Kenny to Sir Shawn, "that the little cottage down by the waterfall is took by a stranger woman."

There was "a blast of talk" even about trifles among the country-people, from whom Patsy kept his distance with an abhorrence of gossip and curiosity about other people's business. Many a one had tried to pump Patsy,—the people had an inordinate curiosity about their "betters"—and of late tongues had been very busy with the return of Mrs. Comerford and the reconciliation with Lady O'Gara: also with Miss Stella and her parentage. Those who tried to pump Patsy Kenny about these matters embarked, and they knew it, on perilous seas. Patsy's stiff face as he repelled the gossips was a sight to see. He had also to keep at bay many questions about Susan Horridge and her boy, in doing which he showed some asperity and thereby gave a handle to the gossips.

"I should have thought the cottage by the waterfall a damp place," said Sir Shawn, indifferently. He was not much interested in the petty happenings of the neighbourhood.

"She won't stay," Patsy went on with a shake of his head. "They'll get at her about ould Hercules. A lone woman like that will be scared out of her life. I saw her in Dunphy's shop buyin' her little bits of food. She's not the common sort. She was all in black, with a veil about her face. She'll have no truck with them long-tongued people about here."

"Oh, a superior class?" said Sir Shawn, now faintly interested. The Waterfall Cottage was his property. He supposed Norman, who lived in the town and did his legal business, had let it.

"Not to say a lady," said Patsy, "but nigh hand one. She have the little place rale snug and comfortable. She'll keep herself to herself. There's two lone women in it now, herself and Mrs. Horridge. Mrs. Horridge do be drawin' the water from the well behind the Waterfall Cottage, and this Mrs. Wade kem out an' spoke to her. She took great notice of Georgie. The schoolmaster's well contint with Georgie. He takes to the Irish like a duck to water. The master do be sayin' he's better at the language nor them that should be spakin' it be rights. He'll have him doin' a trifle o' poetry in it by the Christmas holidays."

"Oh! So the two lonesome women have made friends with each other. Between them they'll be a match for Hercules' ghost," Sir Shawn said, faintly smiling.

By this time Terry had joined his regiment, and Eileen had gone for a time to her parents. She usually went home rather unwillingly, complaining of the discomfort of the tightly packed house. Apparently she did not add to the joy of her family during those periodic visits and she made no pretence of eagerness about going. But this time, for some reason, she was quite pleased to go. She even set about refurbishing her wardrobe, and was not above accepting help from Stella, who was very quick with her needle and possessed a Frenchwoman's art in making excellent use of what materials came her way. These preparations somewhat mystified Lady O'Gara, for usually Eileen took only her less reputable garments when she went home, because she had to live in her trunk, or share a wardrobe with two sisters, who would hang their roughest garments over her evening frocks if she were to bring them.

Lady O'Gara sometimes wondered if she had chosen wisely in selecting Eileen from Anthony Creagh's quiverful to be her companion during the years Terry was at school and college. The others had been tumbling over each other like frolicsome young puppies when the choice was made; Eileen had been sitting placidly eating bread and honey. She remembered that Anne Creagh had said that Eileen would always get the best of things! To Lady O'Gara's eyes, the demure little girl, with a golden plait hanging down each side of her face, and the large blue eyes, had looked like a little Blessed Mary in the Temple of Albrecht Duerer.

Perhaps she had not chosen. Perhaps Eileen had chosen her, when she said to Anne Creagh, "Dear Anne, you have so many girls. Lend me one for company. I shall be very good to her and shall only keep her during your pleasure."

Eileen had heard the speech, and had seized on Lady O'Gara, not to be detached. When it had come to longer and longer visits, so that Eileen was oftener at Castle Talbot than at home, Anne Creagh had said, "Ah, well, Eileen knows what is good for her. The others don't. They've no worldly wisdom. There is Hilary, who runs away from every school we send him to. They are all like Hilary, except Eileen. She's a changeling."

With Terry gone, Eileen had put off her sulkiness. Lady O'Gara came on the two girls one day at work on a pink billowy stuff, which was evidently going to be an evening-frock. At least Stella was at work, and Eileen was looking on. Eileen usually commandeered some one to her service when any sewing was to be done. She had confessed that she could not endure to have her forefinger pricked by the needle.

"You are going to be very smart, Eileen," Lady O'Gara said. "This looks like gaieties at Inver."

"There may be some," answered Eileen, colouring slightly. "There are some soldiers under canvas at Inver Hill."

Lady O'Gara referred to Eileen's preparations a little later in talking with her husband. Sir Shawn had got a bee in his bonnet about Terry and Eileen. For the first time during all their years of love he had been irritable with his wife about Terry—Terry, who had given them so little trouble in his twenty years of life.

"I am glad she has the spirit," he said. "A pretty girl like Eileen need not go wasting her charms on a young ass who doesn't know his own mind."

"Oh, Shawn! Poor Terry!"

"Terry has been playing fast and loose with Eileen."

"He would not like to hear you say so," Lady O'Gara said, with a proud and wounded air.

"There you go, Mary, getting your back up! Your one son can do no wrong. Do you deny that he was philandering after Eileen before Stella came, and that he has been philandering after Stella since?"

"Do you know, Shawn," Lady O'Gara said, with sudden energy, "that, fond as I am of Eileen, I think she has not the stuff in her to hold a boy like Terry. There is something lethargic in her. I'm afraid she is a little selfish. She can be very sweet when she likes, but I think at heart she is cold."

"This is a late discovery, Mary."

Lady O'Gara laughed, a little ruefully.

"I think it is a very old discovery," she said. "Anne said to me once—she never pretended that she loved Eileen as well as some of the others—that Eileen had a way of looking at her when she was in high spirits or something of the sort that was like a douche of cold water. I have had the lame experience myself. Eileen said something the other day about 'at your age.' I felt ninety, all of a sudden."

"Nonsense, Mary! Eileen adores you."

Lady O'Gara said no more. She let pass, with a shrug of her shoulders, her husband's accusation that she was fickle like Terry, putting away the old love for the new.

Suddenly Sir Shawn asked a direct question.

"Are you quite certain about Stella's parentage, Mary? She is the child of that French soldier, St. Maur, was it? and the Irish governess?"

"Of course, Shawn."

It had never occurred to Lady O'Gara to doubt it.

She looked at her husband with wondering eyes. The lights in her brown eyes were as deep and quiet now as when she was in her young beauty. She had a sudden illumination. Was that the bee in Shawn's bonnet? There had been a certain silence about Stella's parentage. She thought she understood it. Mrs. Comerford had always been jealous of her loves. She did not wish it recalled that Stella, whom she adored, had not belonged to her by any tie of blood. Shawn must have got it into his head that the mystery might cover something disgraceful.

"You may be quite sure, Shawn," she said, her candid eyes fixed on him: "There was nothing to conceal. Aunt Grace has told me everything."

His face cleared. "Then I confess," he said almost gaily, "that Stella is a young angel. Perhaps I was too hard on Terry."

The evenings began to draw in. Sir Shawn missed his boy. The hunting season was at hand. The opening meet was to be at Dunmara Cross-Roads in a fortnight's time. Lady O'Gara went out perhaps once a week. The other days Sir Shawn would miss Terry jogging along beside him, on the way to the meet in the morning, full of cheerful anticipation; riding homewards, tired and happy, in the dusk. Stella had never ridden to hounds. She had done little riding, indeed, since the days at the advanced Roman Convent when the girls went out on the Campagna in a flock, in charge of a discreet riding master, of unimpeachable age and plainness.

He was thinking as he rode home one evening, with the dusk closing in, that it would be pleasant to have Stella with him when Mary was not available. It was one tangible thing against Eileen that she did not like horses. Anthony Creagh's daughter! It seemed incredible to Sir Shawn, as it did to Patsy Kenny, that any one should not like horses.

There was a little mare not quite up to racing standard which he thought would just do for Stella. Indeed, though he did not know it, Patsy Kenny had put the idea into his head.

"That wan 'ud carry a lady in less than no time," Patsy had said, "A lady about the size of Miss Stella. She'd take the ditches like a bird."

But Patsy was always talking in his slow way, and Sir Shawn was not always listening to him, or he seemed not to listen. He had a way of forgetting his surroundings and travelling off to a distance where even she who loved him best could not follow. But sometimes he heard when he did not seem to hear and was unconscious of having heard. He was going to ride Mustapha this Winter as soon, he said with his slow smile, as Patsy Kenny would permit it. Mustapha, although a beautiful creature to look at, had not yet been "whispered" by Patsy. He had still an uncommonly nasty temper, and indeed most of the tricks a horse could possess. Sir Shawn thought some hard work would improve Mustapha's temper, but Patsy remained oddly unwilling. "Give me a week or two longer to get over him," he would say when Sir Shawn proposed to ride Mustapha.

He had lunched one day with Sir James Dillon, fourteen miles off, and had waited for tea, and on the way home his horse had lost a shoe. He hoped Mary would not be anxious. He had said he would be home by five, and had meant it; but Lady Dillon, who was, her friends said, the wittiest woman in Ireland, had so beguiled the time in the billiard-room after lunch that he had not noticed it passing. And, since he was not the man to ride a horse who had lost a shoe, he had walked the last six Irish miles of the road.

Very seldom did he take the road on which Terence Comerford had been killed, more than twenty years back. One could avoid it by a detour, so he had only taken it when necessity called for the short road, and he had always found it an ordeal. But he was not going to put an extra mile on to the tired horse because of his own feelings.

He had come near the dreaded spot where Terence Comerford had been flung on to the convenient heap of shingle. Already he could hear the roar of the water where it tumbled over the weir like long green hair. Above it on either side the banks of the river rose steeply. On the side nearest to him was the Mount, in the heart of which Admiral Hercules O'Hart had chosen to be buried. It was covered thickly with trees. In Spring it was beautiful with primroses which showed not a leaf between, a primrose sea which seemed in places as though a wave had run forward into the lower slopes of green grass and retreated leaving a foam of primroses behind.

The horse pulled up sharply at the sound of the waterfall and stood quivering in the darkness. There was a glimmer of light overhead, but because of the thick trees this road was very dark.

"It is only the water falling over the weir, you foolish thing!" he said, caressing the long brown nose of the little horse.

The horse answered with a whinny and, talking to him to distract his attention, Sir Shawn got him along. Perhaps the horse knew that his master's heart was cold. It was a well-nigh unendurable pain to Sir Shawn to pass the place where the friend of his youth and boyhood had been killed.

Suddenly the horse jibbed again. A long ray of light had streamed out on to the darkness of the road. At first Sir Shawn thought it was a hooded lantern. Few came this road, unless it might be a stranger who did not know the countryside traditions. But the light was steady; it did not move as a lantern carried in the hand would have done.

It flashed upon him what it was. The woman in the Waterfall Cottage must have lit her lamp, forgetting to shutter her window which looked upon the road. The cottage turned a gable to the road, from which a paling divided it. Otherwise the little place was hidden away behind a wall, approached by a short avenue from a gate some distance away. A pretty place, with a garden that looked on to the fields, but very lonely for one woman, and too near the water.

The light remained steady. As though it gave him confidence, the horse went on quietly, feeling his master's hand upon him. Just opposite the gable of the cottage a wall of loose stones led into the O'Hart park. The house had been long derelict and was going to be pulled down, now that the Congested Board, as the people called it, had acquired the O'Hart property.

Any one who wanted to go that way knocked down a stone from the wall. There was a little cairn there always, though the employees of the Board were constantly putting back the stones.

The light from the cottage fell full on the cairn. Sir Shawn's eyes rested on it and were quickly averted. There the heap of stones for mending the road had lain that night long ago when Spitfire, had run away with Terence Comerford and thrown him. There had been blood on the stones—blood and ... and ... brains. Horrible!

Sir Shawn had come level now with the long ray of light. At the edge of it he paused. He could see plainly the interior of the room. The unshaded lamp threw its bright light into every corner of the room. It was comfortable and homelike. The furniture had belonged to the previous tenant of the cottage and had been taken over by the estate. It was good, old-fashioned furniture of a certain dignity. The grandfather clock by the wall, the tall mahogany bookcase, the sofa and chairs covered in red damask, were all good. There was a round convex mirror above the fireplace and some pictures on the wall. The fire burned brightly, toning down somewhat the hard unshaded lamplight.

A woman was sitting by the fire. She was in black with a white collar and cuffs. Her hair was braided about her head. She sat with her cheek resting in her hand, a pensive figure.

As though she knew she was being watched she started, turning her face sharply towards the window. Evidently she had forgotten to pull down the blind. As she turned, her face was in the full lamplight.

"My God!" Sir Shawn said to himself. "My God!"

He stood for a few seconds as though in pain, leaning against the horse's side, before he went on. When he lifted his head darkness had come again. The window had been shuttered.



CHAPTER IX

THE LETTER

From the pile of her letters one morning a month or so later, Lady O'Gara picked out one and eyed it with distaste. It looked mean. The envelope of flimsy paper was dirty. Some emanation came from the thing like a warning of evil: she laid it on one side, away from her honest respectable letters.

While she read through one or two of these the disreputable letter awaiting her attention worried her. It was something importunate, disagreeable, like a debased face thrust in at her door. With a sigh she turned to it, to get it out of the way before she opened Terry's letter, clean and dandyish, written on the delicate paper the Regiment affected.

She held the thing gingerly by the edge, and, going away from the table, she stood by the fire while she opened it. A smell of turf-smoke came out of it,—nothing worse than that. Perhaps, after all, it was only one of the many appeals for help which came to her pretty constantly.

"HONOURED MADAM,—This is from one who wishes you no harm, but onley good. There is a woman lives in the Waterfall Cottage your husband goes to see often. Such doins ought not to be Aloud.

"From your sinceer Well-Wisher, XXX."

If it had been a longer letter she would not have read it. It was so short and written so legibly that the whole disgraceful thing leaped at her in a single glance.

As though it had been a noxious reptile which had bitten her she flung it from her into the heart of the brightly burning fire of wood and turf. A little flame sprang up and it was gone, just as Sir Shawn came into the room.

They had the breakfast room to themselves now that there were no visitors, but Lady O'Gara hesitated to speak. She had no intention of keeping the matter of the anonymous letter from her husband, but she wanted to let him eat his breakfast in peace, and to talk later on, secure from possible interruptions.

She gave him scraps of news from her letters, and from The Times of the preceding day, which reached them at their breakfast table. She felt disturbed and agitated, but only as one does who has received an insult. She would be better when she had told Shawn about the horrid thing.

Her restlessness, so unlike her usual benign placidity, at last attracted her husband's notice.

"Any disturbing news, Mary?" he asked.

"Nothing." Her hand hovered over Terry's letter. "Terry thinks he can get a few days' leave next week for the pheasants and bring a couple of brother-officers with him."

"H'm!" Sir Shawn said, a little grimly. "He hasn't been away very long. I suppose Eileen is coming back."

"She comes on Monday."

"I expect he knows it."

"Perhaps he does. Have you finished, Shawn? Another cup of tea? No? I want to talk to you, dear. Will you come out to the Robin's Seat. It is really a beautiful morning."

"Let me get my pipe."

Unsuspiciously he found his pipe and tobacco pouch and followed her. The Robin's Seat was a wooden seat below a little hooded arch, under a high wall over which had grown all manner of climbing wall-plants. The arbour and the seat were on the edge of a path which formed the uppermost of three terraces: below the lowest the country swept away to the bog. The wall, made to copy one in a famous Roman garden, was beautiful at all times of the year, with its strange clinging and climbing plants that flourished so well in this mild soft air. In Autumn it was particularly beautiful with its deep reds and golds and purples and bronzes. The Robin's Seat was a favourite resting-place of these two married lovers, who fed the robins that came strutting about their feet, and even perched on their knees, asking a crumb.

Despite the disturbance of her mind Lady O'Gara had not forgotten her feathered pensioners. She threw crumbs to them as she talked, and the robins picked them up and flirted their little heads and bodies daintily, turning a bright inquiring eye on her when the supply ceased.

"Well, Mary?"

"I hate to tell you, Shawn." She brushed away the last crumbs from her lap. "I did not tell you the truth when I said there was nothing disturbing among my letters."

"I knew there was something. We have not lived so long together for me not to know you through and through. And you are as open as the day."

"It was a horrid thing, a creeping, lying thing."

"An anonymous letter." His eyes fluttered nervously under the droop of the long lashes. "You should have put it in the fire, darling."

"I did. There was so little of it that unfortunately I saw it all at a glance. It is horrid to think that any one about here could do such a thing."

Suddenly she laughed. She had a peculiarly joyous laugh.

"They,—whoever wrote it—should have said something more likely to be believed. They said—I beg your pardon for telling you, Shawn—that you were visiting a lady at the Waterfall Cottage."

She was looking at him and suddenly she saw the shadows come in his face which had had the power to disturb her before: or she thought she did. The upper part of his face was in shadow from the balsam that dropped its trails like a fringe over the arch.

"You did not believe it, Mary?"

"What do you think? Would you believe such a story of me?"

"Don't!" he said, and there was something sharp, like a cry, in the protest. "No reptile would be base enough to spit at you."

They were alone together. Below them the terraces fell to the coloured bogs. A river winding through the bog showed as a darkly blue ribbon, reflecting the cloud of indigo which hung above the bog. Beyond was the Wood of the Echoes, the trees apparently with their feet in the water in which other trees showed inverted. Not a creature to see them, but the robins.

Suddenly he put his head down on her shoulder, with the air of a tired child.

"Your correspondent was not a liar, Mary," he said. "I have visited Mrs. Wade at Waterfall Cottage, at night too, and only not by stealth because I thought that Hercules' ghost—" he shivered a little—"would have kept spies and onlookers from that place."

Lady O'Gara shifted his head slightly with the greatest gentleness, so that she might caress him, stroking his hair with her fingers.

"Well, and why not?" she asked, with her air of gaiety.

"There never was such a wife as you, Mary," he said. "Go on stroking my hair. It draws the pain out."

"You have neuralgia?" she asked with quick alarm.

"No: it is a duller pain than that. It is a sort of congestion caused by keeping secrets from you."

"Secrets!" Her voice was quite unsuspicious. "You could not keep them long."

He sat up and looked at her, and she saw that there was pain in his eyes.

"I have been keeping secrets from you all our wedded life together, Mary."

She uttered a little sound of dismay—of grief. Then she said, with an assumption of an easy manner:

"And if you have, Shawn, well—they must be things I had no right to know. There are reticences I can respect. Other people's secrets might be involved...."

"That was it," he said eagerly. "There was another person's secret involved. I kept it back when it would have rested my heart to tell you."

"I shall not ask you to tell me now unless the time has come to tell. I can trust you, Shawn."

"The time may have come," he answered, drawing down her caressing hand to kiss it. "Another man might have told it to win you the more completely, Mary. He might have found justification for betraying his friend. I thought at one time you must have cared for Terence Comerford and not for me. It was the strangest thing in the world that you should have cared for me. Terence was so splendid, so big, so handsome and pleasant with every one. How could you have preferred me before him? And I knew he wasn't fit for you, Mary. I knew there was another girl,—yet I held my peace. It tortured me, to keep silence. And there was the other girl to be thought of. He owed reparation to the other girl. But his mother had her heart set on you for a daughter-in-law. I believe he would have done the right thing if he had lived,—in spite of all it would have meant to his mother. He had a good heart,—but—oh, my God!—he should not have lifted his eyes to you when there was that other poor girl!"

He spoke in a voice as though he were being tortured, and her caressing hand felt the cold sweat ooze out on his forehead. How sensitive he was! How he grieved for his friend after all those years!

"He did not really lift his eyes to me as you say," she said. "His mother wanted it. He never did. A woman is not deceived."

"But you cared for him—to some extent?" he asked jealously.

"I never cared for any man but one," she answered. "I used to think you would never ask me. Perhaps you never would have only that I came to you when you were so broken down after your illness; and you had not strength enough to resist me."

She finished with a certain pathetic gaiety. With all his deep love for her she had not brought him joyfulness. Many people had noticed it. Her own well-spring of Joy had never run dry. It had survived even his sadness, and had made the house bright for their one child, but there had been moments, hours, when she had felt oddly exhausted, as though she had to bear a double strain of living.

"You saved me from utter despair,—'an angel beautiful and bright.' That is what you seemed to me when you showed me your exquisite pity."

"Poor Terence!" she said softly. "Do you know, Shawn, I believe he was often on the edge of telling me his secret. Over and over again he began and was interrupted, or he drew back."

"Hardly, Mary. Men do not tell such things to the ladies of their family."

"Oh!" She coloured like a girl. "It was,—that. I thought it was ... a lady ... some one he knew in Dublin perhaps."

"It was a girl in Killesky. Her grandmother kept a little public-house. She looked like an old Gipsy-Queen, the grandmother. And the girl—the girl was like a dark rose. All the men in the county raved about her—the gentlemen, I mean. It was extraordinary how many roads led through Killesky. The girl was as modest as she was beautiful. Terence was mad about her. He knocked down a Connaught Ranger man who made a joke about her. That last leave—before he was killed—he was never out of the place. She had been at a convent school—the old woman had brought her up well—and she used to go on visits to school friends in Dublin. Terence told me he met her in Dublin when we were at the Royal Barracks. I implored him to let her alone, but he was angry and told me to mind my own business. That last time it was more serious. Poor little Bridyeen! I told him he ought to marry her. I think he knew it. It made him short-tempered with me. But ... I hope ... I hope...—" the strange anguish came back to his voice—"that he would have married her."

"I remember now," Lady O'Gara said. "I remember the girl. Aunt Grace thought very well of her; she told the old woman she ought not to have Bridyeen serving in the bar. She was a beautiful little creature, like a moss rosebud, such dark hair and the beautiful colour and the ardent look in her eyes. Old Mrs. Dowd answered Aunt Grace with a haughtiness equal to her own. Aunt Grace was very angry: she said the old woman was insolent. I did not learn exactly what Mrs. Dowd had said, but I gathered that she said she knew how to keep her girl as well as Aunt Grace did."

"I sometimes thought the old woman was ambitious," Sir Shawn went on, dreamily. "She used to watch Bridyeen while all those fellows were hanging about her and paying her compliments. I have sometimes thought she meant Bridyeen to marry a gentleman. Several were infatuated enough for that. The old woman was always about watching and listening. I don't think any of them was ever rude to the little girl. She was so innocent to look at. If any man had forgotten himself so far he would have had to answer to the others."

"What became of them—afterwards? Killesky seldom came in my path. I did not know that the picturesque old woman and the little granddaughter had gone till after we were married, when I drove that way and saw the garish new shop going up.

"It was like the old woman to carry off poor Bridyeen from all the scandal and the talk. You remember how ill I was. I thought that as soon as I was well enough I would go and see them—the old woman and the poor child. I would have done what I could. They were gone. No one knew what had become of them. They had gone away quietly and mysteriously. The little place was shut up one morning. You remember how pretty it was, the little thatched house behind its long garden. They had gone to America. Fortunately the people had not begun to talk."

"That poor little thing!" Lady O'Gara said softly. "She looked as shy as a fawn. I wonder what became of her."

"Don't you understand, Mary? She has come back. She is ... Mrs. Wade."

"Oh! She married then? Of course you would want to be kind to her. I suppose she is a widow!"

"I don't think she married. I don't know what brings her back here, unless it is the desire to return which afflicts the Irish wherever they go. She has fixed herself in such a lonely spot. After all, she is my tenant. It is my business to see that she wants for nothing. I recognized her one night I came that way—when I was late and had to take that road. I saw her through the unshuttered window with a strong light on her face. I went back there in daylight and came upon her drawing water from the well. She was frightened at first, but afterwards she seemed glad to see me. She is very lonely. No one goes to see her but Mrs. Horridge,—a good creature—but Bridyeen is a natural lady. I must not go there again though she is a grey-haired woman older than her years—it was strange that I recognized her after twenty years; there are beasts who will talk."

"I shall come with you, Shawn," said Lady O'Gara. "That will be the best way to prevent their talking."



CHAPTER X

MRS. WADE

A friendship had sprung up between Mrs. Horridge and Mrs. Wade, as Sir Shawn had said—a curious friendship, not altogether equal, for Mrs. Wade had a certain amount of education and was curiously refined—America had not altered her even to the extent of affecting her speech; and that was a very exceptional thing, for the returned Americans usually came with a speech altered out of all recognition.

When Lady O'Gara came into the little sitting-room at the cottage, having knocked with her knuckles and obtained no answer, she found Susan Horridge there. Susan stood up, making a little dip, took the boy's garment she had been mending and went away, while Mrs. Wade received her visitor with a curious air of equality. It was not such an equality as she might have learnt in the United States. There was nothing assertive about it. It was quite unconscious.

She seemed profoundly agitated by Lady O'Gara's visit, her colour coming and going, her eyes dilated. She had put out a hand as Susan Horridge went away, almost as though she would have detained her by force.

"Please forgive my coming in like this," Lady O'Gara said. "I was knocking for some time, but you did not hear me. My husband, Sir Shawn O'Gara, has told me about his tenant, and I thought I would like to come and see you."

"Thank you very much, Lady O'Gara. I am sorry you had to wait at the door. Won't you sit down?"

"May I sit here? I don't like facing the light. My eyes are not over-strong."

"Dear me. They look so beautiful too."

The naive compliment seemed to ease the strain in the situation. Lady O'Gara laughed. She had sometimes said that she laughed when she felt like to die with trouble. People had taken it for an exaggerated statement. What cause could Mary O'Gara have to feel like dying with trouble? Even though Shawn O'Gara was a melancholy gentleman, Mary seemed very well able to enjoy life.

"How kind of you!" she said merrily. "I might return the compliment. What a pretty place you have made of this!"

"I brought a few little things with me. I knew nothing was to be bought here. And the things I found here already were good."

"It is a damp place down here under the trees. Now that you have made it so pretty it would be hard to leave it. Else I should suggest another cottage. There is a nice dry one on the upper road."

"Oh! I shouldn't think of leaving this," Mrs. Wade said, nervously. Still her colour kept coming and going. America had not yellowed her as it usually had the revenants. Her dark skin was smooth and richly coloured: her eyes soft and still brilliant. Only the greying of her hair told that she was well on towards middle age.

"But it is very lonely. You are not nervous?"

"I like the loneliness."

"You should have a dog."

Her tongue had nearly slipped into saying that a dog was the kind of company that did not ask questions.

"I should have to exercise a dog."

A queer look of fear came into her eyes. Lady O'Gara could have imagined that she looked stealthily from one side to another.

"But you must go out sometimes," she said.

Again the look of fear cowered away from her. What was it that Mrs. Wade was afraid of?

"I was never one for walking," she said, lamely.

"You don't like to tear yourself from this pretty room?"

It was very pretty. The walls had been thickly whitewashed and the curtains at the window were of a deep rose-colour. A few cushions in the white chairs and sofa repeated the rose-colour. The room seemed to glow within the shadow of the many trees, overhanging too heavily outside.

"You have too many trees here," Lady O'Gara went on. "It must be pitchy towards nightfall. I shall ask my husband to cut down some of them."

She was wondering at her own way with this woman. Gentle and kindly as she was, she had approached the visit with something of shrinking, the unconscious, uncontrollable shrinking of the woman whose ways have always been honourable and tenderly guarded, from the woman who has slipped on the way, however pitiable and forgivable her fault. It is the feeling with which the nun, however much a lover of her kind, approaches the penitent committed to her care.

She suddenly realized that in this case she did not shrink. Whatever difference there might be between her and Mrs. Wade there was not that difference. They met as one honourable woman meets another. Lady O'Gara was glad that she had forgotten to shrink.

"Thank you very much," said Mrs. Wade. "It is kind of you to think of it. But—I like the trees. You are very kind, Lady O'Gara. About the dog,—if I had a little gentle one, who would stay with me while I gardened and not want too much exercise, I should like it."

"I believe I can get you such a one. My cousin, Mrs. Comerford, or rather her adopted daughter, has Poms. There is a little one, rather lame, in the last litter. His leg got hurt somehow. I am sure I can have him. You will be good to him."

Mrs. Wade had drawn back into the shadow. The one window lit the space across by the fireside to the door and the other portion of the room was rather dark. But Lady O'Gara had an idea that the woman's eyes leaped at her.

"I saw the young lady," she said. "She came to Mrs. Horridge's lodge one day I was there. She was so pretty, and the little dogs with her were jumping upon her. Little goldy-coloured dogs they were."

"Yes, that would be Stella. She loves her dogs: I know she would be so glad to give you one, because you would be good to it."

"Maybe she'd bring it to me one day? She's a pretty thing. It would be nice to see her in this house."

The voice was low, but there was something hurried and eager about it. Lady O'Gara imagined that she could see the heave of the woman's breast.

"Certainly. We shall bring the puppy together. I shall tell Stella."

A sudden misgiving came to her when she had said it. Perhaps she ought to be too careful of Stella to bring her into touch with a woman who had slipped from virtue, however innocently and pitiably. It was a scruple which might not have troubled her if Stella had been her own child. There was another thing. Would Grace Comerford, if she knew all, be willing that her adopted daughter should be friends with Mrs. Wade?

Again something leaped at her from the woman's eyes, something of a gratitude which took Lady O'Gara's breath away.

"It will be nice to have a little dog of my own," she said. "It will be great company in the house at night. A little dog like that would be almost like a child. And in the daytime he'd give me word if any one was coming."

Suddenly she seemed to have a new thought. She leant forward and said in the same agitated way:

"You wouldn't be bringing Mrs. Comerford?"

"No, no," said Lady O'Gara. "I shall not bring Mrs. Comerford."

"I knew her long ago. She was kind, but she was very proud," Mrs. Wade said, dropping back into the shadow from which she had emerged.

So it was of Mrs. Comerford she was afraid! What was it? Conscience? Did she think Terence Comerford's mother could have heard anything in that far away time?

"I shall not bring Mrs. Comerford," she said. "Stella is much with me at Castle Talbot."

Again she wondered why she had said "Stella." It would have been "Miss Stella" to another woman of Mrs. Wade's class.

"Might I be making you a cup of tea, Lady O'Gara?" Mrs. Wade asked with a curiously brightening face. "I had put on the kettle in the kitchen for Mrs. Horridge. It will be boiling by this time."

Lady O'Gara was about to refuse. Then she changed her mind. A refusal might hurt Mrs. Wade. Beyond that she had a sudden curiosity,—her husband had often said that she had a touch of the gamin—as to how Mrs. Wade would give her tea. Would she sit down with her in the equality of an afternoon call? There was a little twitch at the corners of her lips as she answered that she would like tea. Sir Shawn was away shooting wild duck, and she would be alone at tea if she went home.

While she waited, still with that half-delighted feeling of curiosity, she went and stood before the old-fashioned bookcase which contained Mrs. Wade's library. Very good, she said to herself. There were odd volumes of Thackeray and Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte. Her dimples came and were reflected as she turned about in the convex glass, with an eagle atop, over the fireplace. Outside a couple of stone eagles perched on the low roof, after the fashion of a bygone day. Far away in the silvery distance of the convex mirror a miniature Lady O'Gara dimpled.

She was remembering a pretentious lady who had called on her a few days earlier—the wife of a newly rich man who had taken Ardnavalley, a place in the neighbourhood, for the shooting. Sir Robert Smith, the multi-millionaire, was very simple. Not so Lady Smith, who had remarked that Bront was always readable.

There were also a few volumes of poetry, not very exacting,—Tennyson, Adelaide Procter, Longfellow, and some Irish books—"The Spirit of the Nation," "Lady Wilde's Poems," Davis, Moore: a few devotional books.

Ah well, it was very good—gentle and innocent reading. And there was Mrs. Wade's prayer-book—The Key of Heaven,—on a small table, the "Imitation of Christ" beside it. By these lay one or two oddly bound books in garish colourings, Lady O'Gara opened one. She saw it was in French—an innocuous French romance suitable for the reading of convent-school girls.

Mechanically she looked at the flyleaf. It bore an inscription; Miss Bride Sweeney, Enfant de Marie, had received this book for proficiency in Italian, some twenty-two years earlier at St. Mary's Convent.

She held the book in her hand when Mrs. Wade appeared, carrying a little tray of unpainted wood, on which was set out a tea for one person, all very dainty, from the small china cup and saucer on its white damask napkin to the thinly cut bread and butter.

Lady O'Gara had been thinking that if Mrs. Wade did not wish to be identified with Bride Sweeney, she should not leave her school-prizes about.

"Ah, you are looking at that old book," Mrs. Wade said, setting down her little tray, while she spread a tea-cloth on the table. "They are very dull stories. Even a convent-school girl could not extract much from them. I'm sorry it's so plain a tea. If I'd known your Ladyship was coming I'd have had some cakes made."

"This home-made bread is delicious," Lady O'Gara said. "But, won't you have some tea too?"

"No, thank you. I am not one for tea at every hour of the day like Mrs. Horridge. I take my tea when you are taking your dinner. You wouldn't like a boiled egg now? I've one little hen laying."

Her voice was coaxing. Now that Lady O'Gara could see the face in full light she thought it an innocent and gentle face. The eyes still looked upward with a kind of passion in their depths. She remembered her husband's epithet,—"ardent." It well described Mrs. Wade's eyes. Just now the ardour was for herself. She wondered why.

"Thank you so very much," she said sweetly. "I don't think I could eat an egg, though. Your tea is delicious."

"The cream is from your own Kerries. Mrs. Horridge arranged it for me that I could get the milk from your dairy. It would make any tea good. She brings me the milk twice daily, or her little lad does."

"Susan seldom ventures out, I think," Lady O'Gara said, while she sipped her tea. "I am glad you get her beyond her own gate."

"She's a scared creature. She dreads the road. Mr. Kenny gets her all she wants from the village. She comes to me across the Mount. She doesn't mind that way even in the dark, though the people about here wouldn't take it on any account. Perhaps she doesn't know the stories. Perhaps, like myself, she thinks a ghost is better company than humans sometimes."

"Ah; you are not afraid of ghosts!"

"If I was," Mrs. Wade's eyes suddenly filled with tears,—"would I be settled here? It's not thinking of the Admiral's ghost I'd be. Maybe there's some you'd welcome back from the grave, if you loved them well enough. I can't imagine any one not wanting the dead back, if so be that you loved them."

Her voice died off in a wail, and suddenly it came to Lady O'Gara that just outside, where the water fell over the weir, Terence Comerford had met with his death.

"No," she said softly, "I cannot imagine any one being afraid of the dear dead."

As she said it she remembered the shadows about her husband's face and her heart was cold.

It was only later that she wondered if Mrs. Wade had chosen that lonely spot to return to because there Terence Comerford's handsome head had lain in its blood. It occurred to her at the same time that not one word had passed between them which could indicate that she knew anything of Mrs. Wade beyond that she had been a dweller in these parts long before she had come to be a tenant of Sir Shawn O'Gara at the Waterfall Cottage.

A curious thing that there should be there side by side, thrown into an odd companionship, two women who had reason to be afraid and had chosen these lonely places to hide. Poor Susan! The reason for her hiding was obvious. With Mrs. Wade it was another matter. Why need she have come back if she so dreaded her past? Or was it the memory of Terence Comerford that drew her, the thought of the old tragedy and the old passion?



CHAPTER XI

THE ONLY PRETTY RING-TIME

Castle Talbot took on new lightness and brightness when Terry came home. His mother said fondly that it was like the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty where life hung in suspense between his goings and comings. The mere presence of this one young man seemed to put all the servants on their mettle. The cook sent up such meals as she did not at any other time. "Sure Sir Shawn and her Ladyship never minded what they would be atin," she said. The gardener, a gruff old cynic usually, gave his best grapes and peaches for "Master Terry"; even the small sewing maid who sat in a slip of a room at a remote corner of the house, mending the house-linen under the supervision of the housekeeper, was known to have said that though she never saw Master Terry she felt he was there.

The dogs were aware of his coming before he came. They had their own intuitions of the joyful expectancy in the house and what it meant. Shot would take to lying in the hall, with one wistful eye fixed on the open hall door, while Lady O'Gara's two Poms became quite hysterical, rushing out when there was no one at all or some one they were well accustomed to, assailing them with foolish shrieks.

"It is all right when Terence is coming home," Lady O'Gara said, smiling. "I can forgive Chloe and Cupid for yapping. It is when he is gone and they rush out at every sound that I find it unbearable."

"You will kill the fatted calf for Terry," Sir Shawn grumbled, "as though he had been a year away. The youngster does nothing but amuse himself. When I was his age we got in some hard work at soldiering."

"Every generation says the same of the one that comes after it," Lady O'Gara rejoined. "Terry loves his work, though he manages to enjoy himself."

"Too much of a golden youth," grumbled his father. "You spoil the boy, Mary!" But his eyes were glad all the time, and the grumbling was only a pretence.

"You'll see what the golden boys are capable of if the war they are always talking about comes in our time," Lady O'Gara said, and a swift shadow passed over her face. "I hope there will be no more wars, even to vindicate them. I suffered enough in those years of the South African War when you were out and Terry and I were alone."

Eileen arrived a few hours earlier than Terry. She clapped her hands to her ears when she arrived, and the Poms broke out into shrill chorus. Shot, who began already to be very dim-sighted, came to the door to see what the clamour was about, and with the most indifferent movement of his tail returned to his place on the rug before the fire.

"Little beasts!" said Eileen, poking viciously at the Poms with her umbrella. "I don't know how you endure them, Cousin Mary; I can hardly tell which is the worst, Chloe or Cupid."

Eileen had never liked the dogs any more than she liked the horses. She was fond of cats and had a favourite smoke-blue Persian, between whom and the Poms there was an armed neutrality. The cat's name was Cleopatra, and she deserved it. Her green eyes shone like emeralds when she curled boa-fashion about her mistress's white neck and looked down at the Poms.

Lady O'Gara had come out on the steps to meet Eileen and had kissed her on each cold satin cheek, making a tender fuss about removing her wraps. Her coldnesses were easily dispelled.

"Come right in, darling, and have some tea," she said fondly. "Why, you are perished! It is very cold. We shall have a frost to-night. And how are all at home?"

"Oh, much the same as usual. Mother has rheumatism. Dad is grumbling over his large and expensive family and the bad year it has been for everything. It is always a bad year with farmers, isn't it? The house is tight-packed, as usual. They always have visitors. I was glad to escape to this delicious roominess. They are all outrageously well and hungry, as Dad says. And some of them will love to come after Christmas, if you can really have them. They must be at home for Christmas, they say. I am sure some of them could well be spared."

A momentary vision passed before Lady O'Gara's inner eyes. It was of Mrs. Anthony Creagh and the quiverful, three boys and five girls then, to be increased later. Mrs. Anthony sat in her armchair, one child on her lap, a second with its face buried in her trailing, somewhat shabby silk skirt, two others peeping from behind her chair. The boys were at a table with books open before them. Eileen, aged eight, and already the beauty of the family, stood by her mother's knee, eating an apple.

"Cousin Mary wants one of my little girls to go home with her," Mrs. Creagh had said, rather tearfully. She was an incurably motherly person, whose heart expanded with the quiver—"She wants one of my little girls to play with her Terry. Who will go?"

The boys had looked indifferent. The child whose face was buried in her mother's skirts seemed to burrow a little further in, while the two standing behind the chair disappeared. The baby on its mother's knee only gurgled cheerfully, as though at the best joke in the world.

Then Eileen had laid down her half-eaten apple, and turning, had thrust her moist little hand into Lady O'Gara's, warm from her muff. Dear friendly thing! Lady O'Gara had brought her back in triumph to Castle Talbot, feeling that she could never do enough to make up to the child for forsaking for her that long family, happy and happy-go-lucky. Eileen had become conventional in her growing-up, not much like the others, who frolicked like puppies and grew up pretty well at their own sweet will.

"I told Mother she should not fill the house with visitors in addition to her long family, if Dad had had a bad year," said Eileen, putting off her furs in the hall. "She said that what people ate never counted. Isn't it just like Mother? What a jolly fire, darling Cousin Mary! And how sweet to see you again!"

She took up Lady O'Gara's hand and kissed it. She had done the same thing that evening long ago when she had come for the first time to Castle Talbot, and had snuggled against Lady O'Gara in the brougham, warming her heart, which was chilly because in a very short time Terry was to go off to his preparatory school for Eton. It was his father's will and she had not grumbled, but she had often felt in her own heart that she had had very little of Terry since he was eight years old.

"Come and eat something," she said, leading the girl into the drawing-room, where the lamps had been lit and the tea-table drawn near the fire. "I told Cook to send up an extra good tea, knowing you would be cold and hungry after your journey."

"How delicious!" Miss Creagh said, lifting off one cover after another. "I haven't had a decent tea since I went away. We are such a hungry family, to say nothing of the visitors."

"Terry will be here in time for dinner," Lady O'Gara said, her eyes joyful. "So put on your best bib-and-tucker. We don't get many occasions to wear our finery. I shall wear my Limerick lace and emeralds."

"And Terry won't see them because he will be thinking only of yourself," Eileen said, devouring sandwiches and hot cakes. For a girl of her slender delicacy she had a very good appetite and usually indulged it, although there were moments when she tried to hold it in check, having detected, as she said, a tendency to embonpoint.

"I can really afford to be greedy, Cousin Mary," she said, with a laughing apology. "I've been starved at Inver. How the stacks of food went! They have such healthy appetites. I couldn't eat potato-cakes, soaked in butter, nor doorsteps as the boys called them, of bread and jam and honey. Fearfully fattening food."

"You remind me of when you came to me and started to grow out of your clothes with such alarming rapidity. When your white satin, long-waisted frock grew too small for you, you said, for you did not like giving it up, 'I can really get into it if I hold myself in like this. And anyhow I've given up pudding!'"

"Ah, that was the worst of me," said Eileen mournfully. "I could never continue long doing without pudding."

She came down to dinner wearing a pale green frock with a prim fichu of chiffon and lace. Terry had already arrived and was in the drawing-room, standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire.

"Hullo, Eileen!" he shouted, "How stunning you look! You grow prettier every day!"

The compliment was too brotherly in its easy candour to please her altogether: but she knew very well she was "stunning." She could see herself in a long old-fashioned mirror on the wall. Her hair was like gold floss. There was no sign of the embonpoint she feared in the slender grace of her figure. The pearls about her neck became her mightily, as did the green ribbon, the same shade as her dress, snooded in her hair.

She lifted her eyes to the boy's frank gaze in a way which she had usually found very effective. She had been able to do anything with Terry when she looked at him like that, and she had tried the same allurement on others than Terry.

"You're only just back," he went on. "Jolly nice of you to come for me. The mater must have missed you."

"They insist on my presence at Inver now and again. I don't know why. It is very unreasonable of them!"

She put out a satin slipper and stirred Shot with it.

"The only drawback to this dear house," she said, "is that there are dogs everywhere."

Shot growled in his sleep. Perhaps she had not touched him in quite the right way. She withdrew her foot in alarm, more alarm that she felt, and turned eyes of a child-like fear upon Terry. "Oh! Shot is cross," she said innocently. The man in Terry answered. He bent towards her as though drawn irresistibly.

There was a flutter of feminine garments in the doorway of the room. Some one looked in and withdrew. Sir Shawn, coming down the stairs, did not notice the small figure by the fire in the hall, fast fading to ashes, the centre of a circle of adoring dogs, who had withdrawn themselves from Miss Creagh's unfriendliness.

He went on to the drawing-room door. He too was attracted by the tableau. Nothing could have been prettier than the boy's bold advance, the girl's withdrawal. They were too engrossed in each other, or appeared to be, to notice his face in the doorway.

With a deep sigh, as of relief, he turned away. Then he caught sight of the pink blob by the fireplace in the hall. Stella was down on her knees feeding the dying fire with sods of turf. Her rose geranium frock made what the children call a "cheese" about her. Her golden brown head was charming against the audacious colour of her frock. The dogs had taken advantage of her position to press about her. Now and again she pushed off Cupid, who was the bold one, with the sod of turf in her hand.

Sir Shawn felt particularly kind towards the girl.

"Hullo, Stella," he said: "I didn't know you had come."

"Some little time ago," she replied. "Grannie is with Lady O'Gara. Do you mind my making up the fire?"

"Not a bit." His heart was light within him, almost to the extent of taking Stella into his confidence. Discreet little thing! She, too, had surprised the pretty picture in the drawing-room, and had withdrawn, leaving the lovers to themselves.

"The lovers." He said the words over to himself, mouthing them as though they were sweet. He had been unnecessarily alarmed. Things were arranging themselves beautifully. He believed in early marriages. The happiness of the youngsters would keep him young. He would get away from his shadows. After a while Terry must come home and settle down somewhere near. A few years of soldiering in these piping times of peace were as much as the boy need do.

So his mind ran on into the happy future while he sat on the arm of one of the red-leather chairs and beamed at Stella, who had always been rather alarmed of Sir Shawn, and came out now as prettily as a flower in the warm sun.

He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight. Dinner-time. A pity the youngsters had not more time to settle their pretty affair. He began to think of what gift he would give Eileen. His mother's pearl cross—large pearls set en cabochon. Mary had so many things. She would not grudge that to Terry's wife.

There were Mary and Grace Comerford coming down the staircase, talking as though they did not see each other constantly. How well Mary looked in the brown silk! It brought out the dear shades of red in her hair and eyes.

He went over and joined the two ladies.

"Only just in time!" he said, in rather a loud voice, as he opened the drawing-room door.

He intended it as a warning, but it was apparently not necessary. Terry was sitting in a chair at one side of the fireplace with Shot's head on his knee. Miss Creagh, a cloud on her face, was in the opposite chair, caressing Cleopatra. Sir Shawn's heart sank. Had they been quarrelling, silly children? He began to tremble for his dream.

"Cleopatra scratched Shot's nose," said Terry, holding up the liver-coloured nose for inspection. "See, it has bled. Eileen will have it that it was Shot's fault. Of course it was not. Shot is so gentle."

He stood up to meet the ladies and, swift as an arrow from the bow, he went to Stella's side.

Poor Sir Shawn! Poor gentleman! The fabric of his rosy dreams had faded to ashes. He looked almost piteously towards Eileen: and, unreasonably, was angry with her because with that sullenness of expression her beauty had departed: she was almost plain. Under his breath he damned Cleopatra.



CHAPTER XII

MOTHER-LOVE

Somehow or other Lady O'Gara found it difficult to get Stella to herself in the days that followed. There were times when she almost thought that Stella deliberately kept away. Sir Shawn had often said, rallying his wife, that Mary never saw further than her own nose. She was a little bewildered about the young people. Terry and Eileen seemed to have quarrelled. Eileen found occupations that kept her in her own room. She had suddenly developed a desire to make herself a coat and skirt, and Lady O'Gara had gone in many times, to find her pinning and fitting on the lay-figure which occupied the centre of the room, surrounded by all manner of snippets and pieces.

This ridiculous pre-occupation of Eileen's gave Lady O'Gara something she did not complain of. She had more of her son than otherwise she would have had. Terry had never looked for better companionship than his mother's, but he grumbled about Eileen nevertheless.

"She used to be always ready to come anywhere," he said. "I know I can't always have you, because Father needs you so much. We have always torn you in pieces between the two of us. I asked Eileen to come out shooting on the bog with me and she wouldn't. She just opened her door and I saw a horrid thing, an indecent thing that pretended to look like a woman's body, taking up the middle of her room."

"It's for fitting dresses on, you ridiculous boy!" Lady O'Gara said laughing.

"It gave me a shock. A horrid, stuffed thing. I shall not be able to look at Eileen again without seeing that. Why does she want to make her dresses? Can't your maid do it? Industry in Eileen is quite a new thing. Not that she's half as good a companion on the bog as you are, darling. I've always had to carry her over the pools. She said she couldn't jump."

Lady O'Gara's face at this frankness was a study.

"She's so helpless. Not like a country girl, at all. You remember that day with the bull. She left Stella to be gored by the bull and expected to be admired for it."

There was certainly a change in Terry's attitude towards Eileen. Lady O'Gara sighed, because of what she knew was in her husband's mind rather than for any disappointment in herself. Eileen was not her ideal wife for Terry.

"Eileen will go with you all right," she said. They were standing in front of the house on the gravel-sweep. "I've just told her she was injuring her complexion by staying indoors. She has gone to put on her hat. I did not like to tell her that Margaret McKeon lamented to me that Eileen was cutting out that beautiful Foxford tweed so badly. We'll go and rout out Stella. She has not been over here for five days."

Terry's face lit up.

"I don't know why Stella's out with me," he said. "She is always hiding behind your skirts or Mrs. Comerford's when I am about and want to talk to her."

His mother looked at him, with the yearning tenderness of the woman who would give all the world to her beloved man if she only might.

"You like Stella?"

"Yes: she's a little darling. Don't you?"

"I am very fond of Stella. Perhaps ... she thinks ... You like Eileen very much?"

After all, if her boy wanted Stella, why should even his father's preferences prevail? She had surprised a glance in Stella's eyes when they rested on Terry for a brief moment before they quickly veiled themselves. The child had something Southern in her. So, for the matter of that, had Terry. She was fond of Eileen, but, simple as she was, she had not had Eileen with her pretty constantly for many years without being aware of a certain shallowness in the girl. The blood under the fair skin ran thinly, coldly.

His face lit up with such a light that she was alarmed at what she had done. What would Shawn say if he knew? But, after all, Shawn had married where he loved. Why should not the boy have the same felicity? Stella had been pushing her small soft way into Mary O'Gara's heart. She knew now that Eileen could never have been the little daughter she wanted.

"You think she would mind that?" His eyes leaped at her.

She felt like one who had burnt her boats. She would not look before or behind. Shawn was wrong, she said vehemently to herself. Eileen was not the girl for Terry.

"I will tell you a secret, Terry," she said. "The first evening you came back, in the drawing-room before dinner, there was something that might have passed for a love-scene between you and Eileen. Your father opened the door and withdrew. Then he discovered that Stella had come downstairs before him and was playing with the dogs in the hall by the dying fire. He supposed that she had surprised that scene before he did."

Oh, poor Shawn! What a use she was making of his confidence! But men never knew about their sons as mothers did. She would give anything, except her own soul, to procure Terry the joy he desired. And it was a good joy. She loved Stella. Of course, she would be very good to Eileen, but she did not want Eileen for a daughter-in-law. Shawn did not look very deeply. He had hardly considered Eileen except as something pretty and gentle, who was pleasant in the house and sang him Moore's Melodies of evenings in a small sweet voice. He missed her when she returned to her own people.

"I was an idiot for a second," the boy said, shamefacedly. "I don't suppose you understand, Mother, but men are like that. Eileen can be very alluring when she likes and..."

"Don't tell me any more. I can imagine," Lady O'Gara said and laughed, a laugh which had a certain shyness in it.

"Then we fell out over the cat and dog," he said. "Eileen was rather rude. Perhaps I was a little rough with Cleopatra, but she had scratched Shot's nose. You know what Shot is! It was an entirely unprovoked attack. I believe I did say that Cleopatra should be sent to the Cats' Home."

Eileen appeared at this point, coming with an unwilling air. It was true that her staying within-doors so much had not improved her looks. She had not a very good circulation at any time. That, or her mood, had given her rose and white a dull, leaden look. Her discontented little face was lifted towards the dappled sky. It was really a beautiful day of Autumn. There was a little wind, and the last yellow leaves on the branches tinkled like so many small golden cymbals. A pale gold sun was going low amid oceans of amber touched with rose, and above dappled clouds were floating as though the day was February.

"It is so cold," said Eileen, and shivered. "I don't see how Margaret can get on without fitting me. She had made up such a nice fire in my room. I cannot see why any one wants to go out in such weather."

"Oh, come along, you little grumbler!" Lady O'Gara said with her infectious gaiety. "Come for a good trot. I know what will happen to you: you'll get chilblains if you sit by the fire in cold weather. Your hands will be dreadful to look at, and your feet will be a torture."

Eileen looked down at her feet and then at her hands, childishly. She had very pretty feet and hands.

"They are all right so far," she said.

"You and Terry had better race each other to the bridge," Lady O'Gara said. "I want to see the colour in your face, child."

"Come along," said Terry, and caught at Eileen's hand. Half-unwillingly she ran with him, but when Lady O'Gara caught up with them, Eileen was laughing and panting.

"This wretched son of yours," she said, "has run me off my feet."

"And you look the better for it," Lady O'Gara answered, her brown eyes merry and her cheeks dimpling like a girl's. "We are going for Stella, to bring her back to tea. She has not been near us for some days."

"Oh!" Eileen had gone back to the chilly voice. "She doesn't want to come. She finds us rather dull, I think."

Lady O'Gara laughed.

"I don't believe any one could find us dull," she said merrily, "least of all Stella."

"Oh well, I suppose I'm not telling the truth," Eileen said huffily. "All I know is she asked me the last time I saw her if Terry ever brought any of his brother-officers home with him."

Terry's candid face clouded over ever so slightly; while his mother remarked that, of course, three was an awkward number for games. They wanted another man. She believed she had been talking about it.

"You might ask Major Evelyn," she said to Terry. "It is still possible to have golf when there is fine weather."

"I wonder if he would come?" Terry said ingenuously. "Think of a second-lieutenant like me asking a swell like Evelyn! Why, his decorations make a perfect breastplate when he chooses to put them on. Not that it is a matter of choice. He only does it when he can't help it. He did so splendidly in South Africa."

"I dare say he'd condescend to come," Lady O'Gara said. "Few sportsmen can resist the Castle Talbot duck-shooting."

"Do ask him," said Eileen, becoming animated. "Two's company, three's none. Everything is lop-sided without a second man."

"I'll ask him, of course," Terry said. "But I don't suppose he'll come. It is like a kid in the Lower School asking a prefect to tea. He may come—for the grub. On the other hand he may give the kid a kicking for his impudence."

After all, they had not to go as far as Inch. They met Stella exercising her dogs about half a mile from her own gates. She would like to come to tea if she might first take the dogs home and leave word as to where she had gone.

To Lady O'Gara's mind she looked small and unhappy as soon as the flush had faded which came when she saw them. She clung to Lady O'Gara, and could not be detached from her. The dogs, surrounding her, made a barrier between her and Terry, who, at first, kept as close to her as he could, leaving Eileen to walk the other side of Lady O'Gara.

But Stella did not seem to have much to say to him. She was too engrossed with the dogs and with his mother to spare him a word. The eager light which had come to his eyes when he had first caught sight of her faded. His candid face was overcast. She had been keeping him at arms-length ever since he had come back.

His mother watched him with a comprehension which was half tender amusement, half compassion. He was becoming a little sullen over Stella's persistent disregard of him. She watched the set boyish mouth, the pucker of his forehead—her baby. Terry had always had that pucker for perplexity or disappointment. Why, he had had it when the first down was on his baby head, as soft as a duckling's.

The road grew narrow. He began to lag behind, to veer towards Eileen.

"Is it worth while for us all to go on to Inch?" he asked in his discontented young voice. "Supposing Eileen and I go on by the river, while you and Stella take back the dogs! They wouldn't follow me or I'd offer to go home with them. It must be nearly a mile to the house from the gate."

"I've a better way than that," Lady O'Gara said on a sudden impulse. She had taken Stella's cold little hand in hers, and it made a mute appeal. She was sure Stella was unhappy, poor little motherless child. The two poor children, fretting and worrying each other about nothing at all! Her comprehending, merry, pitiful gaze went from one to the other young face.

"Suppose Eileen and I walk back. You'll overtake us before we get home. You two are such quick walkers."

Eileen's lips opened as though to protest. Her face had brightened at Terry's suggestion. She closed them again in a tight snap.

"I never can see the good of walking about wet roads," she said crossly. "It must be nice to live in a town, where there are dry pavements, and people, and shops."

A robin rained out his little song from a bough above her head, and behind the trees the sky broke up into magnificence—the sun looking from under a great dun cloud suffused with his rays, while all below him was a cool greenish bluish wash of sky, tender and delicate.