"You would not find that in a city, Eileen," Lady O'Gara said, pushing away gently Stella's cold little hand that seemed to cling to hers.

"Make her trot, Terry," she said. "Her hands are cold as little frogs, like the child's hands in Herrick's 'Grace for a Child.'

"Cold as paddocks though they be, Still I lift them up to thee For a benison to fall On our meat and on us all."

She saw the sudden rush of joy to her son's face and she was a little lonely. She felt that she was no longer first with Terry.



CHAPTER XIII

THE OLD LOVE

Sir Shawn was still out when they got back, after a brisk walk. The laggard young people made no appearance for tea, though they waited a while. Eileen grumbled discontentedly over everything being cold and suggested a carelessness in Stella about other people's convenience. The tea-cakes had been kept warm over a spirit-lamp, but she was in a captious mood. Lady O'Gara wondered at the girl, who had sometimes been embarrassingly effusive in the display of her affection. Had she spoilt Eileen? or was the girl feeling sore and a little out of it?

The suggestion that Eileen might be feeling Terry's desertion of her was enough to soften his mother's heart towards the captious girl, who as soon as she had finished her tea,—and a very good tea she made—went off to see how Margaret McKeon was progressing with her skirt.

At the door she turned about.

"Do you think I might have a new evening frock, Cousin Mary?" she asked. "My pink has gone out of fashion. There are such beautiful blues in some patterns I have got from Liberty's: I could make it myself, with Margaret's help. It would only need a little lace to trim it, or some of that pearl trimming Liberty's use so much."

"Certainly, my dear child. Let me know what it will cost. I have a piece of Carrickmacross lace somewhere which would make a fichu. You must remind me, Eileen. We live so quietly here that I do not remember how the fashions change."

"I've hardly noticed, either," said Eileen, with a hand on the door handle. "The pink does very well for home-wear. But if Terry is going to have friends, I should want something a little smarter."

Lady O'Gara smiled. So Eileen was interested in the coming of Major Evelyn! And she had made so good a tea that any one less ethereal-looking than Eileen might have been considered greedy! She had left very little of the abundant tea to be removed.

"We'll have a turning-out one of these days," she said. "I noticed your wardrobe was very full the other day when I was in your-room. We can send off what you don't want to Inver, and I shall add a few lengths of that Liberty silk. Brigid and Nora are so clever with that little sewing machine I gave them last Christmas that they'll turn out something very pretty for themselves."

"They've no occasion for pretty things," said Eileen. "There never was any young man there but Robin Gillespie, the doctor's son. He is in India in the R.A.M.C. Brigid liked him, I think, but he was not thinking of Brigid."

Then she closed the door on her departing footsteps, leaving Lady O'Gara to her thoughts.

She put the consideration of Eileen from her a little impatiently. She was afraid Eileen was selfish. She did not seem to have any desire to share her good things with her family, not even with her mother, yet Mrs. Creagh was a very sweet mother; Mrs. Comerford who had a cynical way sometimes had remarked one day when Eileen had been very caressing with Lady O'Gara: "If your mother is like what I remember her you need not go further for some one to love."

It was the day on which Lady O'Gara had given Eileen her necklet of amethysts and seed-pearls—a beautiful antique thing, of no great intrinsic value beyond its workmanship.

It suddenly came to her that, for a good while past, she had got into a way of propitiating Eileen with gifts. It had not occurred to her exactly as propitiation, but she had learnt that when Eileen was out of sorts the gift of some pretty thing worked wonders. Had she been spoiling the girl? Was she herself responsible for the whims and fancies which Eileen took so often nowadays? In the old days it had not been so. Eileen had been sweet-tempered and placidly selfish. There was a change in her of late. It was quite unlike the old Eileen to go away and leave her sitting alone in the drawing-room with only two watchful Poms, each with a bright eye upon her from their respective chairs, and Shot stretched at her feet, to keep her company.

She acquitted herself. Love and generosity ought not to spoil any one: they ought to lift up, to awake their like. Was Eileen in love with Terry and resenting his desertion? No; she said emphatically in her thoughts. She would have known if Eileen cared. If it had been that she could have been very tolerant.

Her thoughts went back to the first beginnings of difficulty with Eileen, and she fixed them at the date of her return from her visit home during the preceding summer. The fatted calf had been killed for the girl's return. Lady O'Gara remembered how she had anticipated it, and had thought of what Eileen liked, the special food and sweets, and so on. She had kept Margaret McKeon busy with the new chintz curtains and cushions for Miss Eileen's room, and when it was all finished had fussed about doing one little thing and another till the privileged maid had been moved to protest.

"Hasn't Miss Eileen had everything she wanted from the lucky day for her that she came here? Don't be robbin' yourself, m'lady."

Lady O'Gara had taken some of her own pretty things, a crystal clock, a silver and tortoiseshell box for the toilet table—things Eileen particularly admired—and had added them to the other pretty things, her gifts, of which the room had many. She had brought an armful of her dearest books: and she had insisted on pink roses because Eileen particularly liked pink.

After all Eileen had been cold when she came. It had been like a douch of cold water. She had not recovered her sweet placidity since that time. Lady O'Gara had commented on the change to her husband, but he had not seen it. He was fond of Eileen, in a superficial way. Indeed his devotion to and absorption in his wife were such that almost all other affection in him must be superficial by contrast. To two people his love had been given passionately, to Terence Comerford and to his wife. He never spoke of the dead friend. It was a well-understood thing in the circle that Terence Comerford was not to be spoken of carelessly, when Sir Shawn was within hearing.

Sitting alone in the firelight, except for the adoring dogs, Lady O'Gara let her thoughts wander on away from Eileen. How deep and passionate was Shawn's love when it was given. He had shrunk from that first meeting with Mrs. Comerford after all those years. He had turned pale when she had taken his hand in hers, looking at him with a long gaze that asked pardon for her past unreason and remembered that he and her dead son had been dearer than brothers. After all those years that touch with the past had opened the floodgates of grief in Shawn O'Gara. Only his wife knew the anguish, the disturbed nights and the weary days that followed. Grief in him was like a sharp physical suffering.

Dear Shawn! How glad she was that she was so strong and healthy and had such good spirits always, so as to be able to cheer and comfort him. She smiled to herself, remembering how some of her friends had pitied her because she must always be uplifting his mood. She had never wearied nor found it an irksome effort. A serious sad thought came to her; when the hour of the inevitable parting came she prayed it might be her lot to be left desolate rather than his.

She looked at her little watch, a delicate French thing, with a tiny painted picture on the back framed within pearls ending in a true-lovers'-knot, one of Shawn's many gifts. Six o'clock. It was time Shawn was home. She was very glad he had not ridden Mustapha, as he had wanted to. Patsy Kenny had dissuaded him. Terry must have stayed on at Inch for tea. It had been a cold bright day, and it must be turning to frost, for the fire was burning so redly. The cold was on the floor too, for the little dogs had left their baskets and taken to the chairs, a thing supposed to be strictly forbidden, although as a matter of fact Chloe and Cupid were always cheerfully disobedient. She wished Shawn was home. He had gone up the mountains to a shooting-lodge, where was a party of men gathered to shoot red deer. He had been out overnight and he would be very tired when he came home after a long drive on an outside car. Well, after all, it was better than Mustapha. Patsy's unwillingness to see Sir Shawn go out on Mustapha had infected her, little nervous as she was where horse-flesh was concerned.

She comforted herself. It was not like those dreadful days when there had been trouble with the tenants, and she had sat in this very room, listening in anguish for the sound of the horse's hoofs coming fast. Terry had been away at his preparatory school then. She had never told any one her terrors. Perhaps some of the servants had guessed them. She remembered the night of the Big Wind, when Shawn had been out, and the house had shaken in the first onslaught of the hurricane, before he came.

There was a butler's pantry close to the drawing-room door which had always an open window. She had often stolen in there in the dark to listen for the sound of the mare's trot. Fatima had been Shawn's favourite mount in those days, and no one could mistake the sound of her delicate feet in the distance. There, with her ear to the night, Mary O'Gara had listened and listened, her heart thumping so fast sometimes that she could not be sure if she heard the horse's hoofs. Only, as she used to say joyously afterwards, there was really no mistaking Fatima's trot when she was coming.

Once, Rafferty, the old butler, who was dead now, had opened the pantry door suddenly, and had all but let the tray of Waterford glass he was carrying fall, for the fright she had given him.

She remembered how on that night of the Big Wind, when her terror was at its worst. Patsy Kenny had asked to see her about something or other; how she had gone into the office to talk to him; how he had talked gently about Fatima, how sure-footed she was and how wise, and how little likely to be frightened as long as she was carrying her master. He had wandered off into simple homely talk, about the supply of turf, how the fair had gone, the price the people were getting for their beasts; now and again leaving off to say, when the moan of the wind came and the house shook: "Glory be to God, it's goin' to be a wild night, so it is!" Or "That was a smart little clap o' win'. It's a great blessin' to be on dry land to-night."

Patsy's way with the dumb beasts was well known; and Lady O'Gara had said afterwards, when she had her husband warm and dry by the fire, and she too happy, being relieved of her terrors, to mind the storm which had not yet reached anything like its height, that Patsy had soothed her as though she were a nervous horse.

Shawn had been younger and stronger then. He had laughed at her fears and had insisted on making a night of it, keeping a roaring fire and lamplight all through the terrifying din, while the servants in the kitchen said their Rosary and prayed for the night to be over. Sometime in the wild late dawn, when the wind was subsiding, Shawn had made her go to bed, saying he would follow. But he had not come for a long time, and she had dropped asleep and wakened to his weary face beside her bed, and to hear him saying that, thank God, they had got out the horses, although the stables were all but in ruins.

As she thought over these things the fulness of her love for her husband swept her heart like a Springtide. It was sweet yet poignant, for she had the pity beyond all telling in her love for Shawn. Suddenly she began to be a little in dread because she had been going against what she knew were his wishes. Would he mind very much if Terry's choice were Stella and not Eileen? She hoped he would not—at first. Later on, when he knew little Stella better, with her soft appealing ways, he would be glad. Eileen would never be such a dear little daughter. Stella had not those ardent eyes for nothing.

Her disinclination to let the winds of heaven blow too roughly on the men she loved, for whom she had always the maternal pity, brought a sharp revulsion of feeling. After all, the world was for the young. They had never refused Terry anything. In a detached way the father was very fond of his boy. He was not necessary to him. No one was that except his wife: but he had been a kind, indulgent father. Why should not Terry wait a little till his father came to know Stella better? Things would be all right then. Shawn had seemed to avoid Stella, perhaps because he avoided Mrs. Comerford.

At last there was Terry's ringing step in the hall. There could be little doubt to the mother's mind of what tidings he brought. There was triumph in the step.

He burst in on his mother like a young wind.

"Darling," he said, "I'm so very sorry not to have come home for tea. I simply couldn't induce Stella to: she's so dreadfully shy, but she adores you. Congratulate me!"

He placed his two young firm hands on his mother's shoulders, and stooping, he kissed her.

"I shall never love you any less, you know," he said boyishly. "You angel, how you helped us! Not many mothers of an only boy would have done it."

To their ears came the sound of wheels, approaching the house, now near, now far, as the long avenue turned and twisted.

"It is your father," said Lady O'Gara. "He will be very tired. Don't tell him yet, Terry. He hardly knows Stella. You are very young. It will have to be something of a long engagement."

"Oh!" he said, but less disappointedly than she had feared, "You too! Mrs. Comerford said we must wait. I don't want to wait. I want to shout out to the whole world that Stella is mine, but, of course, I know. Father would rather have had Eileen. I have known Eileen since I was eight years old. Love does not come that way."

He was repeating her own words, her own thought. She was relieved that he was so amenable.

"After all," she said roguishly, "there have been moments when you seemed on the edge of falling in love with Eileen. Last June we thought it was all but settled, your father and I."

"Oh," he said shamelessly, "when the true gods come the half-gods go."

Sir Shawn came into the room. He was pale and tired and the shadows crept in the hollows of his cheeks. She was glad he was not to be disturbed by Terry's love-story to-night. She wondered if he would notice the shining radiance of the boy's face. Joy—the triumphant joy of the accepted lover—dazzled there to her eyes. She was relieved when the boy went away and left them alone. When Shawn was tired he was irresistible to her tenderness. For the moment even Terry was out of it.



CHAPTER XIV

STELLA GOES VISITING

Lady O'Gara had met Stella, had drawn her to her and kissed her warmly and softly.

"Your Granny will not have it just yet, Stella," she said, "so we need not announce it, need we? As though all the world will not read it in Terry's eyes!"

It made it easier that Mrs. Comerford was somewhat unreasonable about the engagement. There was too short an acquaintance, she said. Three months,—what was three months? And they had not had three weeks of each other's society. Too slender a foundation on which to build a life's happiness. And Terry had been obviously in love, or what such children called love, with Eileen, when they came. He must be sure of himself before she gave him Stella.

She had drawn back in some curious way, Lady O'Gara felt, for she had seemed pleased when Terry openly displayed his infatuation. The most candid creature alive, although for the moment she held a secret, Lady O'Gara was puzzled by something in Grace Comerford. Once she said that she was sorry she had yielded to the ridiculous Irish passion for return: and when Mary O'Gara had looked at her with a certain pain in her expression she had railed upon the wet Irish climate. But the weather was not what she had meant. Had she not said that in Italy and Egypt she had been parched for the Atlantic rain-storms and the humid atmosphere of Western Ireland?

It was a relief that the duck-shooting had begun with the frost: that there was rough shooting in the other days to keep the men out of doors. Major Evelyn and another man, a cheerful little blonde boy named Earnshaw, had got a few days leave from the Curragh. Their presence imposed a certain restraint upon Terry in regard to his love-making—otherwise it must have been obvious even to his father, despite that growing absent-mindedness which enfolded Shawn O'Gara like a mist.

Eileen seemed happy once again. Lady O'Gara began to reproach herself; doubtless Castle Talbot in Winter was a lonesome place for the young. Young Earnshaw was obviously epris with Stella, while Major Evelyn, a big, laughing brown man, attached himself to Eileen.

Eileen, despite her dislike of the sound of a shot,—she would clap her hands over her pretty ears, with their swinging hoops of turquoise, whenever a gun was fired,—went out with the guns when they shot the last of the pheasants, she at least managed to accompany the lunch. In the evenings she sang to the tired happy men—her Irish songs, while Major Evelyn watched her, an admiring light in his brown eyes. He was half-Irish, and the sentiment of the songs appealed to him. Night after night Eileen went through her little repertoire, charming with her soft, veiled voice, and Sir Shawn was drawn in from his office to listen with the others. Only occasionally Stella put in an appearance, which was as well in the circumstances, Terry was so taken up attending to all possible needs of his C.O., and wondering ingenuously why Evelyn had done him the honour to come, that he bore the deprivation imposed upon him by Mrs. Comerford better than he might otherwise have done.

When she should be alone again with Shawn she would tell him, Lady O'Gara said to herself. She had surprisingly few moments alone with him these days. A few days more and the house would have settled down quietly once more. She would be passing Terry's room, with the door standing open revealing its emptiness, as she had had to do many times, always missing the boy sadly.

One of these days Eileen went out alone with the lunch while Stella came to the meal at Castle Talbot. Sir Shawn was absent. Lady O'Gara had ordered a specially dainty lunch such as a young girl would like. She loved to give Stella pleasure, and to draw out the look of adoration from her soft bright eyes, which had something of the shyness and wildness of the woodland creature. Terry had complained boyishly that Stella ran away from him, was shy of his caresses. He had had to take her by capture, he said, and his mother loved him none the less. They were going to see Mrs. Wade. Stella was already friends with Susan Horridge at the South lodge and with Georgie. She had heard much of Mrs. Wade from them, and she pitied her loneliness, as she pitied Susan's when Georgie was at school.

"Odd, isn't it, dear?" she asked in her soft deliberate voice: she had lost or nearly lost the slightly foreign way of speaking she had had at first. "Odd, isn't it, that those two natural recluses should have found each other? The other day I was talking to Susan, when some one shook the gate and there was a rattle of tins. I thought Susan would have fainted. I had to go to the gate for her. It was only a procession of tinkers, as Patsy calls them, and an impudent fellow asked me if I wanted any pots or pans mended. I asked him did I look like wanting any pots or pans mended, and he nodded his head towards the lodge. 'The good woman of the house there might,' he said. 'She keeps herself to herself. I never knew this gate locked before.' Poor Susan asked me twenty questions about what the man looked like. I think she was satisfied."

"We are going to bring Mrs. Wade a gift of a puppy," Lady O'Gara said. "You shall select one from Judy's family, with the assistance of Patsy. They are a good lot."

"I know the one she shall have," Stella said. "It is the one with a few white hairs on his breast. Patsy says they'll be a patch as big as a plate when he's older, and tells him he's a disgrace to the litter. He's a darling, much nicer than the others. May I carry him, dear?"

"Won't he be rather heavy?"

"He can walk for little bits where it is dry. But he falls over his great big puppy paws. I don't think there ever were such beautiful dogs as your setters, not even my Poms or yours."

"I did think of asking you to give Mrs. Wade a Pom, but although they are good watchdogs they would not afford such a sense of protection as a setter. I hope she'll like a setter puppy just as well. We are very proud of our setters. The old Shot strain is known everywhere. It has been in the family for at least two hundred years."

Lady O'Gara could be very eloquent about the dogs, but she refrained. This little daughter of hers was just as much a lover of the little brethren as she was. Stella simply could not endure to see anything killed, which was a reason against her going out with the guns. Once or twice when she had seen anything shot, although she had not screamed like Eileen, she had turned pale, while her dark eyes had dilated as though with fear. Lady O'Gara, noticing how close and silky the gold nut-brown hair grew, rather like feathers than hair, had said to herself that Stella had been a rabbit or a squirrel or perhaps a wild bird in one of her incarnations.

They went off after lunch to see Mrs. Wade, the waddling puppy following them, now and again tumbling over his paws. They went out by Susan's gate, where Lady O'Gara stopped to admire the garden that was growing up about the lodge.

"You have transfigured it, Susan," she said. "It used to be so damp here with the old ragged laurels. They are well away. But I would not have thought there was such good earth under them; the ground always seemed caked so hard."

"So it were, my lady," said Susan, colouring prettily. "It were Mr. Kenny. He has worked so 'ard. Him an' Georgie've been puttin' in bulbs no end these last few days, when he can spare an half-hour from his horses. It's downright pleasant to watch them do it, knowin' that the dead-lookin' things come forth in glory soon as ever this wet Winter's past."

Susan had to bring out her Michael to be presented to the puppy, who had no name as yet, but Michael only growled and disappeared into the lodge as soon as he was released, like an arrow from the bow. Jealousy, Susan pronounced it, and suggested that the puppy should be called Pansy.

"I fancied callin' Michael Pansy," she said. "But Mr. Kenny, he fair talked me out of it. His eyes do favour the brown pansies that growed in my old granny's garden in the Cotswolds."

A thousand, thousand pities, Lady O'Gara thought, as they went down the hill towards the river, that Patsy Kenny, that confirmed bachelor, should apparently have found his ideal in an unhappily married woman.

Stella was carrying the puppy, so that he should not arrive muddy at his new mistress's house. She had twined a ridiculous blue ribbon in his russet curls, which he tried to work off whenever he got a chance, desisting only to lick vigorously at her hand.

"He knew me when he was a blind puppy," Stella explained. "I had them all in my lap when they were a few hours old. Judy let me handle them. You should see Eileen's face of disgust as I sat on the horse-block in the stable-yard with my arms full of them."

"I can see it!" Lady O'Gara said, with a queer little smile.

The day had been one of heavy showers, between which a pale sun came out and gilt the dappled golds and browns of the woods, and set up a rainbow bridge on the rain cloud that had passed over. They had left the house in a fair interval. They were within sight of the Waterfall Cottage, within hearing of the water as it fell over the weir, when the heavy drops began to patter. They ran the intervening space, Lady O'Gara laughing like a girl. It was the girlishness in her that made girls love her society, while they adored her in her own proper place.

As they passed the window of Mrs. Wade's cottage, where it showed beyond the iron railing, Lady O'Gara glanced that way. The interior of the room was no longer visible to the casual passer-by. Curtains were drawn across it, but through the parting of the curtains one caught a glimpse of fire-light. It would be a pleasant rosy window in the desolate road when the lamps were lit. But probably Mrs. Wade shuttered her window against the night, although the barred opening in the wall, designed to give light to the window, was well protected by its bristling spikes atop.

The gate was padlocked. They remained shaking it long enough to make them fearful that they would have to turn back before Mrs. Wade came flying down the avenue to open to them.

"I am so sorry I kept you waiting," she said, panting: "I had just gone into the house when you came. I have been so busy getting my garden into order."

She was stooping in the act of unlocking the gate. A pale shaft of watery sunlight came and lay on her hair, showing how thick and soft it was, how closely it grew. The sun was in her eyes, dazzling, and on her cheek, making it pale. She took the hand Lady O'Gara extended to her, without looking at Stella.

"This is your little dog, Mrs. Wade," Stella said, not waiting to be introduced. "Now isn't he a darling? I think myself he's the pick of the basket, although Patsy Kenny says he's a disgrace to the place, with that old white waistcoat making a holy show of him."

Mrs. Wade looked at her, shading her eyes with her hand.

"Thank you, miss," she said humbly. "I'm sure he'll be a dear little dog and a great companion."

She had a fluttered, flustered look. Her breath came short. Lady O'Gara wondered if her heart was strong.

"I've been expecting you any day at all, m'lady," she went on. "You didn't say when you'd come, but you said you'd come and I've been expecting you, though I used to say to myself, 'She won't come yet: it's too soon to be expecting her. Maybe 'tis in a month's time or six weeks she'd be coming, with the little dog and the young lady. She wouldn't be remembering. Hasn't she her beautiful son at home?'"

Lady O'Gara was touched. She had forgotten how very lonely Mrs. Wade's lot must be. After all, Susan Horridge could not be very much of a companion to Mrs. Wade, who, despite the humility of her manner, was evidently a person of some education and refinement.

"We shall come oftener now," she said. "It has been a rather busy time. I am sure Stella will come often to see you and the dog. We must find a name for him. I once knew a man who called his dog, Dog,—just that. We must find something better than that."

She was talking to set Mrs. Wade at her ease. Mrs. Wade lit the lamp; apologizing for the darkness of the firelit room. The deep pink shade flooded the room with rosy light. There was a tea-table set in the background. Lady O'Gara had a passing wonder as to whether the table had been set daily in expectation of their visit.

"Now, what do you think of your dog?" Stella asked, as soon as the lamp was lit. "See how he has made himself at home already, lying on his side on the hearthrug as though he was a big dog, and not a ridiculous tumbling-over puppy." Mrs. Wade knelt down obediently to receive the puppy's large paw, with more than a suspicion of white about the toes, which Stella laid in her hand. As the two heads met together it occurred to Lady O'Gara that the hair grew similarly on the two heads, close, silken, rippling.

She watched Mrs. Wade take the dog's paws and hold them against her breast. A very lonely woman, she said to herself. There had been something of passion in the little act and in the way she laid her cheek against the dog's head.

"I can see he's going to have a most lovely time," said Stella approvingly. "We'll call him Terry, I think, after Mr. Terry O'Gara. All my dogs are called after my friends. I haven't a Terry yet, though."

"Oh, no, not that name, please," Mrs. Wade said. "Let me call him Keep, if you don't mind, Miss. He's going to keep me and the house, and we'll keep together."

"Oh, certainly," said Stella, a little surprised at Mrs. Wade's manner. "I know some people don't like dogs called after people. There was a dear old man in Rome, Count Raimondi, Carlo Raimondi. I had a dear King Charles spaniel then. He died of distemper, poor darling! Count Raimondi did not like Carlo's being called after him. He had just the same mouth and eyes, and both were rather fond of their food. So I had to change Carlo for Golliwog, poor darling."

Mrs. Wade laughed, a sweet fresh laugh. Lady O'Gara was glad she could laugh. She asked to be excused while she made the tea, and in her absence Stella went round the room, exclaiming at the prettiness of everything.

"Only I do not like her to be so lonely," she said. "I must come very often to see her. She is a darling, is she not? Don't you feel drawn to love her? Think of her having to depend on Susan for society—nice as Susan is!"

Mrs. Wade came back with a dainty tea. She was with difficulty persuaded to share it, saying that she had had her tea earlier. But even when she yielded to persuasion she did not make much of a tea. She had picked up a fan and sat shading her eyes with it from the lamp. From the shadow her eyes doated on Stella.



CHAPTER XV

THE SHADOW

One evening some ten days later Lady O'Gara, who had been out, arrived home with the dressing-bell. Hurrying upstairs, she found her husband in his dressing-room. He had had his bath: she noticed that his hair was wet as he stood in front of the glass, knotting his white cravat. He wore hunting things in the Winter evenings, and the scarlet coat, with the little facing of blue, became his dark skin and eyes.

"Is it you, Mary?" he asked, without turning round. "What kept you so late?"

"I forgot the time. I went to see Mrs. Wade, and found Stella there. I did not know she had been there since we brought Mrs. Wade a puppy to keep her company. Stella was on her way here. She had sent on her luggage, meaning to follow."

Sir Shawn turned about completely and stared at her. She saw that his face was disturbed.

"I wonder if it was wise to take Stella there!" he said. "Poor woman! One would not deny her any happiness. But—I warn you, Grace Comerford will not like it. There is another thing, Mary. Come in and shut the door. In a few minutes we shall have to go downstairs and talk platitudes. I could wish we were alone once more."

"Why, what is the matter, Shawn!" Lady O'Gara asked, coming forward in some alarm. "You don't feel ill?"

"I feel as well as ever I feel. But I've been infernally disturbed. Evelyn, quite gaily, and showing his white teeth, as he does when he laughs—I've nothing against Evelyn—frightened me by talking about Terry and Stella. He said it was delightful to see children so thoroughly in love. I pulled him up, rather short. He turned it off with a half apology, but I could see he did not believe me when I said there was nothing. 'Oh, they haven't told him.' I could see by his eyes that he thought that. I felt infernally frightened, I can tell you!"

"Oh, but why, Shawn?" Lady O'Gara's eyes fluttered nervously in the candlelight. She was frightened at her own complicity, really frightened for the first time. "Why shouldn't the poor children be happy? I know you like Eileen better than Stella. Still it is not a question of our choice."

She had been strangely, implicitly obedient to her husband during their married life, even when she might well have departed from obedience.

"What in God's Name are you talking about, Mary?" he asked and she felt vaguely shocked. Shawn had always been reverent in using the Name of His Creator. "It is not a question of my likes or dislikes. Why, for the matter of that, I can see little Stella with the poor lad's eyes well enough. But this thing simply cannot go on. It must be killed. God knows I don't want to hurt the boy. I'd give my life to make him happy, although I don't show him affection as you do, as you can. Is it possible you did not understand? Was I stupid about explaining to you? Don't you know that Stella is Terence's daughter?"

No; she had not known. That was plain enough in her face.

"Oh, no," she said in a bewildered way. "Stella is the daughter of Gaston de St. Maur...."

"Grace Comerford said so, or she allowed people to believe it. Did she ever say so? Stella is the daughter of Terence Comerford and Bridyeen Sweeney, whom you know as Mrs. Wade. Don't you see now how impossible it is? I wish to Heaven Grace Comerford had not come back."

A sense of the piteousness, the pitilessness, of it all came overwhelmingly to Mary O'Gara. She had been learning to love Stella. The fond, ardent little creature had pushed herself into her heart. What was to happen to them all, to Terry, to Stella, to herself?

"You are sure, Shawn?" she asked, rubbing her hands together as though she were cold. But while she asked the certainty was borne in upon her. It was the starved mother-love that had burned in Mrs. Wade's eyes as they rested on the girl. It was the unconscious daughterly tenderness, the mysterious attraction which had made Stella chatter on the homeward way of Mrs. Wade and how she pitied her, she knew not for what.

She threw out her hands in a gesture of despair.

"It seems we are all going to be hurt," she said. "I would not mind if it were not for the children. Why did Grace Comerford bring Stella where she and Terry were certain to meet? The boy was bound to find her irresistible?"

She remembered suddenly that the dinner bell might ring at any moment and that the patient Margaret MacKeon was waiting to help her to dress. She sighed. It was one of the moments when one finds the social demands hard to endure.

"One of us will have to tell Terry," she said. "It is not a pretty story. Poor little Stella!"

No one would have thought from Lady O'Gara's demeanour at the dinner table that Black Care pressed hard on her white shoulders. Sir Shawn had often said that when his wife chose she could put the young girls in the shade.

She put them in the shade to-night. She had a deep, brilliant spot of colour in either cheek. Her dress of leaf brown matched her eyes and hair. She had laid aside her other jewels for a close-fitting antique collar of garnets, the deep ruby of which suggested a like colour in the gown as it did in her eyes.

Eileen was out of it with Major Evelyn and pouted. Terry was tired and happy after his day of tramping over the bogs. He seemed content to watch Stella across the bowl of growing violets which was between them. Young Earnshaw talked nonsense and Stella dimpled and smiled. She had gained the colour of the moss rose-bud since she had come back to Ireland. There was a daintiness, a delicacy in her little face with the softly moulded, yet firm features, the grey-brown eyes with dark lashes, the arched fine brows, which would have made a plain face distinguished. Her head as she moved it about in the lamplight—she had bird-like gestures—showed a sheen like a pheasant's breast. Watching her miserably Sir Shawn O'Gara said to himself that Terence Comerford's red hair had come out as golden bronze on his daughter's pretty head.

He had a girl at either hand, as Lady O'Gara had the two male visitors. Terry, the odd man, had come round and slipped in between his father and Eileen, moving her table-napkin so that she sat between him and Major Evelyn. He and his father were almost equally silent from different reasons.

Eileen at first had been crumbling her bread, sending her food away untasted or only just tasted. She was vexed about something. It was not like Eileen to be capricious over her food.

Perhaps Lady O'Gara noticed the dissatisfaction and ascribed it to the fact that Eileen was not having the attention she desired, so she drew gently out of a very interesting discussion she was having with Major Evelyn and turned to little Earnshaw, an agreeably impudent boy, with cheeks like a Winter apple and an irresistibly jolly smile. He seemed to have got over his first shyness with Stella and was conducting his veiled love-making with a rather charming audacity. Lady O'Gara had glanced a little anxiously once or twice at Terry, but there was obviously only amusement at young Earnshaw's way in Terry's face. He must be very sure of Stella.

"Don't mind him," he said across the table while she watched. "He's very young and he's apt to get excited when he stays up for dinner. Very often the Mess has to pack him off to bed."

Mary O'Gara smiled at the banter between the two boys. Now and again she inclined an ear to the conversation of Major Evelyn and Eileen. The big, handsome, jovial man of the world, whom his subalterns, while evidently deeply admiring him, called "Cecil," did not find much to interest him in Eileen, though he was too well-bred to show it.

Stella, laughing, put down her head with one of her bird-like movements. Her hair was parted in the centre and the thick masses of it, so much like plumage, went off in silken waves and curls and was looped behind her little ears where it was combed up from her white neck. She was wearing green tonight, a vivid emerald green which would have tried a less beautiful complexion.

The movement, the close fine ripple of the hair, were like Mrs. Wade's; there was no reason to doubt the relationship. Would others see it? But Mrs. Wade hardly ever walked abroad. She seemed as much afraid of her fellow-creatures as any one could wish her to be.

Lady O'Gara found herself seeking for another likeness. No; except for that slight redness in the hair there was nothing she could discover of Terence Comerford. She wondered vaguely whether Grace Comerford had looked for such a likeness and been disappointed.

She let her thoughts slip away from things around her. She asked herself whether in the circumstance Mrs. Wade was a fit companion for her daughter, and answered herself, with a little scorn, that there was nothing to fear from the mother's influence. She remembered something she had caught sight of at the end of a little cross-passage in Waterfall Cottage. There was a statue, a throbbing rosy lamp in the darkness. Mrs. Wade was at 7 o'clock Mass at the Convent every morning despite her recluse habits. She was a good woman, whatever there was in her past.

Lady O'Gara recalled herself with a start to the things about her. How long had her thoughts been straying? Not very long, for the plates were being taken away that had been full when last she was aware of them.

Her eyes rested on Eileen's face. A name caught her ear—Robin Gillespie. Oh, that was the doctor's son of whom Eileen had spoken with a certain consciousness. Eileen's manner had suggested that Robin Gillespie was in love with her, while she said: "Of course he has not a penny and never will have."

Eileen was listening now, absorbed in what Major Evelyn was saying. Her lips were parted, her eyes and colour bright. The air of slackness which so often dulled her beauty had disappeared. For once she was animated.

Major Evelyn perceived that his hostess was listening and turned to her with a courteous intention to include her in the conversation. He was charming to all women, this big man, with the irresistible gaiety. Poor Eileen, she had been playing off all her little charms upon him, and in vain. He showed openly his preference for an old woman, as Mary O'Gara called herself in her thoughts, wincing a little.

"I've discovered that Miss Creagh knows Gillespie, the young doctor who has defied all the Army Regulations. It was quite an excitement in India. The Rajah of Bundelpore had a very bad attack of Indian cholera one night. His own doctors could do nothing for him. Some one—the Rajah's heir who had been at Harrow, probably—sent over for the regimental doctor, who happened to be Gillespie. He found all sorts of devilry going on while the Rajah writhed and turned black and green. Gillespie took him in hand—I heard his treatment was nearly as weird as that of the native doctors. There was something about blackberry jam stirred in boiling water for an astringent drink. Anyhow the Rajah pulled through. He's got a constitution like a horse. And as soon as he was well he presented Gillespie with a horse that was the very Kohinoor of horses—Gillespie sold him, for a preposterous sum I believe, to Lord Nutwood—magnificent jewels and a lakh of rupees."

"How much is a lakh of rupees?" Eileen asked with breathless interest.

"Oh, a big sum—somewhere about fifty thousand pounds. The jewels are worth as much. Then came in the Indian Government and the Army Regulations. They ordered Gillespie to return the Rajah's gifts. Gillespie, who hadn't a penny to bless himself with—it was understood that all he could squeeze out of his pay went home to his people in Ireland—snapped his fingers at them. They bid him choose between leaving the Service and giving up the Rajah's gifts. Gillespie quite unhesitatingly—I believe they really thought there could be a question of choice—gave up the Service. I hear he's come home and means to set up as a specialist in Cavendish Square. They said there was a girl in the case, some girl who wouldn't have him, and that took the savour even out of the lakh of rupees. I don't suppose it's true. Do you happen to know him, Miss Creagh? He is from your part of the world, Donegal way."

"My people know him quite well," said Eileen, her breath coming and going fast. "Just fancy, I never heard of it. You'd have thought some one would have written to me."

She frowned, looking down at her plate.

At bed-time when Lady O'Gara, putting her own preoccupations aside, went to say good-night to Eileen she found her in tears.

"My dear, what is it?" she asked in dismay.

"Oh, Cousin Mary—you know that story Major Evelyn told us about Robin Gillespie. Well—isn't it awful?" she broke into sobbing. "I wouldn't listen to him when he asked me to be engaged to him. He said he knew he was a poor ... poor ... beggar, but ... with that to spur him on ... he could do anything. I was ... horrid. I told him to ask ... Brigid. He said it wasn't Brigid he wanted ... it was me. He got ... angry at last ... and now... I know I loved him ... all the time."

Lady O'Gara troubled as she was, could not refrain from smiling, but as Eileen's tears apparently had overtaken her during the process of brushing her hair, and the long mantle of greenish grey, silver-gold hair hung about her face, Lady O'Gara's smile passed unnoticed.

"Do you think ... it would seem ... very forward of me to write to him?" asked Eileen; and then looked from the curtain of her hair with wet eyes but a new hopefulness.

"I should ask Brigid. He may have acted on your advice."

"Oh, but he hadn't time," said Eileen, whose strong point was not humour. "He went away at once, broken-hearted. Besides, I should have known if he had made any advance to Brigid. Cousin Mary, would you mind very much if I went home for a little visit? I know that I have only just come back—but still..."

"Certainly not, Eileen." Lady O'Gara had a feeling that just at present Eileen might be a jarring element. "Make your own arrangements, my dear. I am very glad if it will make you happier."

"Oh, thank you," said Eileen, with effusion. "You are always so sympathetic and understanding, darling Cousin Mary. You see, if Robin has come back as Major Evelyn says, he might be with his people just at this moment."



CHAPTER XVI

THE DEAD HAND

Terry came to his mother a week later with a look in his face which made her want to take his young head in her arms and weep over it. A shadow had fallen on his comely youth. He looked "grumpy," as he had been accustomed to look in his darling childhood when he was about to have a croupy attack, at which times the sense of injury against all the world had been part humorous, whole poignant, to his mother's mind.

"What is it, darling?" she asked, although she knew before he spoke what was the matter.

"I have been talking to Father," he broke out. "Mother, it is intolerable. He says he will not consent to my engagement to Stella. As though he or anybody could prevent it."

"You have not quarrelled?" she asked in quick alarm, anxious for both her men.

He laughed angrily.

"Oh, we didn't shout at each other, if that is what you mean. He told me he would never consent to my engagement. Why? In the name of Heaven why? I asked him that and he wouldn't answer me. He told me to come to you. What bee has he got in his bonnet? I should have thought—Stella is a sort of little sister of Terence Comerford, from whom I am called, whose death I have always understood shadowed Father's life. Oh, I know you've been throwing cold water on me, leading me up to this. I knew when you would not let me shout it out that first night, as I wanted to, before all the world. Father said something about Eileen. Ridiculous! We have never thought of each other. As a matter of fact she has a young man of her own. I always knew he wanted me to marry Eileen. As though I ever could have married any one but Stella!"

She did not at all resent her husband's laying the burden of comfort upon her. He had always left Terry to her.

She looked at his young angry face. He was ramping up and down the little boudoir like an animal in a cage. He was adorably young and she loved him. What was she to say?

"I'm not a child," Terry went on. "Things can't stand like this, as Father expects them to, apparently. One doesn't throw over a girl one loves better than life for no reason at all, and Father will give none except that the marriage is unsuitable. How can it be unsuitable except that I am so unworthy of her? Mother"—he stopped suddenly in his pacing to and fro—"you can do anything with Father. Make him see sense. You know my whole happiness depends on this—and hers. It has gone deep with me."

Suddenly he turned away, and putting his two arms on the mantelpiece he laid down his face upon them.

She went to him and stroked his hair softly. He looked up at her and his eyes were miserable, and so young.

"Darling," he said, "you have always been good to me. Can't you talk Father over? I am going away to-morrow. If he persists in this insanity I shall chuck my commission, go off to Canada and try to make a home there for Stella."

"Terry!" The name was wrung from her like a cry.

"You see I couldn't stay, darling, hanging round in the hope that Father might change his mind. I couldn't stick being engaged and not engaged. I should hate to leave you, of course, darling, but then you wouldn't come. You'd never leave Father. He says his decision is final, but he gives me no reason for it. It is the maddest way of treating a man I ever heard. What does he mean by it?"

"He was always a very indulgent father, Terry. If he refuses you a thing you desire so much he must have a good reason."

She felt the feebleness of her plea even before he turned and looked at her.

"That is really foolish, Mother," he said. "I beg your pardon if I am rude. I'm not a child, to be kept in the dark and told that my elders know what is best for me. Do you know his reasons?"

She had been dreading the question, yet she was unprepared with an answer.

"I see you do," he went on grimly. "But of course you won't tell me, if Father will not, though he sent me to you."

The poor lady was profoundly wretched. Tears were not far off. She would not for the world have wept before the boy. He had enough to bear without her tears.

"Where is your father?" she asked.

"He is in his office. You will speak to him? You angel! Tell him how impossible it is that Stella and I could give up each other. You love her, Mother, don't you? The bird-like thing! I remember you said at first that she was like a bird. She has flown into my heart and I cannot turn her out. Say..."

"I will say all I Can, Terry. Do you feel fit to go back to the others?"

"They don't want me. They are quite happy knocking about the billiard-balls. Evelyn would know, and I don't think I could stand little Earnshaw's chaffing ways."

Boyishly he looked at himself in the glass. He had rumpled his hair out of its usual order. There was a bright colour in his cheeks. He looked brilliantly handsome. What he said was:

"Lord, what an outsider I look!"

She left him there and went off to look for her husband. Her heart was very heavy. Already she knew that the compromise she had to suggest would be received with scorn. It was a weak womanly compromise, just the kind of thing a man will put his foot on and squelch utterly.

He turned round as she came in.

"Well, Mary," he said. "I've been having a very unpleasant discussion with Terry. It ended where it began. He would not listen to me."

She came and stood behind his chair. The fire was low in the grate. There was the intolerable smell of a smoking lamp in the room. The reading-lamp on the table was flaring. She turned it down and replenished the fire. The discomfort of it all—the room felt cold and dismal—depressed her further.

"The poor boy!" she said. "What are we to do, Shawn? You can't expect him to give up Stella without any explanation. He would be a poor creature if he could—not your son or mine. Shawn, you will have to tell him. How could you leave it to me?"

"And if I do, what then?"

She shook her head. She did not know what then: or rather she did not wish to answer the question.

She was sitting on the arm of his chair. He leant his head against her wearily. In the glass above the chimney-piece, tilted towards them, she saw his face and was frightened. Were the purple shadows really there, or did she only imagine them?

"If such a story had been told to me about you, Mary," he asked, "do you suppose it would have made any difference? I would have said like an ancestor of mine:

"Has the pearl less whiteness Because of its birth? Has the violet less brightness For growing near earth?

That is what any lover worth his salt would say: yet when one is older and very proud of one's family the bar sinister is not a thing to be thought of."

"You said yourself that Bridyeen was an innocent creature. You forgave Terence, who was her tempter. You love his memory and you have called your one son after him. Is it fair, is it just?"

She was frightened at her own temerity. The subject of Terence Comerford had always been like an open wound to her husband.

"Did I forgive Terence?" he asked with a wonder that had something child-like about it; "I was very angry with Terence, dreadfully angry. Do you remember that passage, Mary?

"Alas they had been friends in youth;

you know how it goes on:

"And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."

She had slipped an arm about his neck, and her hand went on softly caressing his cheek.

"I think we shall have to tell Terry," she said, "if we persist in our refusal. We could not take up such an untenable position. Unless..."—she hesitated.

"Go on, Mary," he said.

"Unless we were to accept Grace's story of Stella's birth. Why should it not be true?" She asked the question piteously. "Are you sure, Shawn, about the other thing?"

But while she said it she remembered Stella's likeness to Mrs. Wade. Why, any one might see it, any one. A new fear sprang up in her heart, troubled by many fears. This time it was for Stella. Any day, any hour, some one besides herself might discover that likeness. Why, for all she knew the place buzzed with it already. Sooner or later some one would recognize Mrs. Wade as Bridyeen Sweeney. Then it would be easy to piece the old story together. Already people had noticed that Stella had the Comerford colour, which had been, in her own case, the Creagh colour. Grace Comerford ought not to have come back. Shawn was quite right. She ought not to have come back.

"You are a very clever woman, Mary. But it seems to me a cheap novel kind of suggestion. I think we must face the thing as it is. I shall tell Terry to-night."

Terry was told. He came to his mother's room after hearing the story. She had been expecting him. In the end her men always brought her their troubles. So she had piled up a bright fire, had set a couple of softly cushioned chairs side by side, as though the physical comfort would reach the wounded spirit. She smiled to herself rather piteously at the thought. Men were susceptible to comfort, to being petted, no matter at what age one loved them, or in what grief one would comfort them.

She was in her silk dressing gown, her hair in two long plaits before Terry came. Despite his miserable preoccupation his face lightened at sight of her.

"How sweet you look, Mother!" he said. "And so young with your hair like that."

"Come and sit down, my darling boy."

He came and sat by her, and presently he laid his face on her shoulder to conceal, she divined, set eyes.

"What am I to do, Mothereen, at all, at all?" he asked, going back to the phraseology of his nursery days.

"Your father has told you?"

"Yes, he has told me."

"It is pretty bad," she said compassionately.

"Mother," he lifted his face and his eyes were bloodshot. "Why did you call me after that villain? Why does my father love him still? I have never heard you say one word against him."

She flinched before the accusation.

"Dear," she said. "I have only just been told of this. Your father kept it from me all those years."

"And you were engaged to him at the time! Good Lord!" he broke out with young passion. "Don't tell me, Mother, that there is any excuse for him. I could not bear that from you. One law for the man, another for the woman: it is the easy way of the world. My poor little darling!"

Suddenly he choked and got up and went away from her. She found nothing to say.

He was back again in a second, while she watched him helplessly.

"I don't want her to know," he said. "She must not know. What am I to do? She ought to enter this family as its loved and honoured daughter. Mother, I do not intend to give her up."

She had been waiting for it. If he had said otherwise she would have been bitterly disappointed, however much she might have tried to deceive herself. It was a pity, a thousand pities, the child could not have come to them without that smirch. But it had not touched her: there was no stain on her. Thinking upon Stella's mother she said to herself that no levity in the girl she had been had led to her downfall. Why, Shawn had said she was the simplest, whitest of creatures. It made Terence's sin all the blacker.

She drew her boy's head down to her and kissed it.

"I did not ask you to give her up," she said. "I do not take the world's view of such things."

He looked at her with an incredible incredulous relief.

"You angel mother!" he said with a deep sigh. "I might have trusted you. There is one thing. Stella must never know."

"She must never know," she repeated after him.

Her husband's foot sounded in the adjoining room and Terry went away comforted. Shawn did not come in to say good-night to her as usual, by which omission she conjectured the trouble of his mind. She prayed for light, almost in despair of finding it, and slept, although she had expected to lie awake, seeking unhappily a way out of this threatening sorrow for all dear to her.

She awoke somewhere in the small hours. The moon was on her bed and the air was very cold. She came awake suddenly, with a thought in her mind so concrete that it was as though some one had spoken it aloud.

"Is it quite certain that Terence did not marry Bridyeen Sweeney?"

She caught at it as a drowning man catches at a straw. Her heart gave a wild bound towards it. It was so thin, so frail a hope, that while her fingers closed upon it she knew the futility. Again she slept, and the thought was with her when she awoke in the grey morning.



CHAPTER XVII

MISS BRENNAN

She was grateful to the exigencies of the Service which made it absolutely necessary for Terry to be back in barracks next day. He had gone off after breakfast with Major Evelyn and Mr. Earnshaw, forbidding her to come to see him off. Sir Shawn, who was High Sheriff for the year and had to be in the county town for the opening of the Assizes, took the party to the station on his way. She was left with the morning on her hands.

How to use it? Oh, she had been impatient for them to be gone! The hope which had seemed so frail in the night had strengthened and failed, strengthened and failed many times since. This morning it was strong within her. It was founded on so little. Terry had called Terence Comerford hard names last night. A villain. She did not think Terence was a villain. He had been a kindly, affectionate fellow, very quick to be angry about a cruelty to any helpless thing. A good heart: oh, yes, Terence had had a good heart: but, even to her had come the dreary knowledge that good-hearted people can be very cruel in their sins.

She had looked at it from many points of view. Supposing Terence had meant to marry the girl and been prevented by his sudden death! Something came into her mind, dreary and terrible. "The way to Hell is paved with good intentions." Poor Terence, who had laid this coil for their feet, tangling their lives and happiness in the meshes of his passion, had he been paving Hell, just paving Hell, with good intentions never to be realized?

Early as they had started she had found time to speak to her husband about the possibility of there having been a marriage. He had found her beside his bed full-dressed when he opened his eyes on the grey morning.

"Shawn," she had said, "Could Terence have married Bridyeen Sweeney?"

The maze of sleep was still in his eyes. For a moment he stared at her as though she had given him a new idea. Then he turned away fretfully.

"No," he said, "no. Put that out of your head. If it was so would he have let me go on suffering as I did? It was the whiskey was at the root of the trouble. He would never have spoken to me as he did if it had not been for the whiskey."

She passed over the irrelevancy. Shawn was not yet all awake.

"Would he have righted her if he had lived, do you think, Shawn?"

"My God, Mary, how can I tell? Why do you torture me with such senseless questions? You know how that old tragedy has power to upset me.

"I'm sorry, Shawn," she said humbly. "It was for the boy's sake."

She left him, his face turned to the wall, her heart heavy because the hope had failed. But a little later she had the house to herself, and the hope came back again and asked the insistent question.

She was going to see Mrs. Wade for herself and discover if there was hope for Terry and Stella. Common sense whispered at her ear, that it was not likely Mrs. Wade would choose to be Mrs. Wade all those years if she might have been Mrs. Terence Comerford, living at Inch, honoured and with the love of her child. She would not listen to that chilling whisper. She had known many strange things in life, quite contrary to common sense. It would not be common sense now for Terry to want to marry a girl born out of wedlock. It would not be common sense that the girl should be kept in ignorance of the stain on her birth. But these things happened.—A wryness came to Mary O'Gara's sweet mouth with the thought that if Terry married Stella his children would be born of a nameless mother. So the world was so strong in her! Scornfully in her own mind she defied the world.

She took a roundabout way to Waterfall Cottage, because she did not want the slight interruption of speaking to Susan Horridge if she went out by the South lodge, the nearest way. By a detour through her own park she entered O'Hart property, which had been in Chancery since she remembered it, the house going to rack and ruin. Her way led her round by the Mount in which was the tomb of old Hercules.

The earth was warmly beautiful, covered with the rust-coloured Autumn leaves.

Under the trees overlooking the river there were many strangely coloured fungi pushing in rows and ranks from the damp earth on which the foot slid, for it was covered thickly by a moss that exuded slimy stuff when trodden upon as though it was seaweed.

She was just by the vault where the Admiral's coffin stood on its shelf, plain to be seen by any one who had the temerity to peep through the barred grating in the iron door. Suddenly a little figure dipped in front of her and she recognized Miss Brennan, who had once been a lady's maid to a Mrs. O'Hart and had survived the provision made for her before the O'Harts were off the face of the earth. She had come to live in one of the dilapidated lodges on the place, with very little between her and starvation beyond the old-age pension, supplemented by contributions from charity. The old woman was nearer ninety than eighty, but was still lively and intelligent, despite her eccentricity. The big apron she was wearing was full of sticks and she had a bundle in her arms as well.

"Good morning, my Lady," she said, with her little dip. She always prided herself on her superior manners and her traditions, and the neighbours good-naturedly acknowledged her pretensions by addressing her always as Miss Brennan.

"Good morning, Lizzie," returned Lady O'Gara, who was one of the privileged ones to call the old woman by her name. "How are you keeping? It is very rheumatic weather, I'm afraid."

"I'm as well as can be since your Ladyship gave me the beautiful boarded floor to my little place, may the Lord reward you! Squealin' and scurryin' I do hear the rats under the floor, but I'm not afraid now that they'll bite my nose off when I fall asleep."

"I wish I could make it more comfortable for you. Lizzie. I'll see that you get a couple of cribs of turf. Your lodge is damp under the trees."

"Thank your Ladyship," said the old woman with another dip. "I'm wonderful souple in my limbs, considerin' everythin'; for the same house would give a snipe a cowld. The blankets are a great comfort. They're as warm as Injia."

"Oh, I'm glad of that."

She was about to go on her way when Miss Brennan jerked her thumb backward in the direction of Waterfall Cottage.

"She's gone," she said.

"Who is gone?"

"Mrs. Wade, she calls herself. I knew as soon as ever I laid eyes on her she was little Bride Sweeney, old Judy Dowd's granddaughter. She kep' out of the way o' the people that might ha' known her. She stopped to spake to me one day I was pickin' sticks an' brought me in an' made me a lovely cup o' tay. She thought I was too old to remember. The little lady that's at Inch now would be her little girl. I've seen them together when they didn't know any wan was lookin'. Them beautiful pink curtains don't meet well. I've seen little Missie on a footstool before the fire an' the mother adorin' her."

Lady O'Gara was overwhelmed. What had been happening during the days—there were not twenty of them—since she had first taken Stella to see Mrs. Wade.

"When little Missie wasn't there Bridyeen would be huggin' the dog the same as if he was a babby. Some people make too much o' dogs. I kep' my old Shep tied up till he died. He was wicked and I wasn't afraid o' tinkers with him about. I saw her once when she didn't think any wan was peepin' in. She was cryin' on the dog's head an' him standin' patient, lickin' her now and again with his tongue. I never could bear the lick of a dog."

Lizzie looked at Lady O'Gara with the most cunning eyes. Apparently she expected contradiction, but she met with none. Lady O'Gara was in fact too dumbfounded to answer.

"Many's the time I took notice of Bridyeen," the old woman went on. "She was well brought up. She respected ould people. When she wint away out of the place I said nothin', whatever I guessed. I said nothin' all those years. It was to me she kem when Mr. Terence Comerford was kilt. 'Tisn't likely I wouldn't know her when I seen her agin. What's twinty years when you're my age? She didn't say I'd made a mistake when I called her Bridyeen. She's gone now, an' I'll miss her. 'Tis a lonesome road without a friend on it, for I'm too ould to take to an Englishwoman, though yon's a quiet crathur at the lodge."

Lady O'Gara was recovering her power of speech. Still she did not feel able to contradict this terrible old woman of the bright piercing eyes, with whom it seemed useless to have any subterfuges.

"You don't be afeard I'll tell, me Lady. I keep meself to meself, away from the commonality round about here. She needn't have gone for me. I'd have held my tongue. 'Twasn't likely I'd want to set tongues clackin' about her that was good to me. As I sez to the little lady...."

Terror seized upon Lady O'Gara. What had the old woman said to Stella?

"You didn't tell the young lady anything?" she said, very gently, remembering not to frighten the frail old creature before her.

"Not me. I said no more than 'Your Mamma's left.'" She looked with a peering anxiety into Lady O'Gara's face, as though she had just begun to doubt her own wisdom. "I didn't do any harm sayin' them words, did I? Didn't I know they was that to each other, seein' them through the chink in the curtain lovin' an' kissin'?"

Was it possible that Stella knew? Anyhow it was no use frightening old Lizzie.

"No, no," Lady O'Gara said. "You did nothing wrong. Only remember, I depend on you for silence. The people are so fond of gossip about here like all country-people."

"I let them go their own ways an' I go mine," Miss Brennan said, and looked down at the sticks which she had dropped. "I don't know who's goin' to pick them up," she said plaintively. "I've picked them up wance an' me ould knees are goin' under me. I don't consider I could do it twicet."

"I'll pick them up and carry them for you," Lady O'Gara said. "It is not far to your lodge. Indeed you ought not to be picking up sticks or carrying them. I'll speak to Patsy Kenny. He'll see that some dry wood is sent down to you, as much as you want. You have only to ask for it to have it any time. That is, if I forget."

"Thank your Ladyship kindly," Miss Brennan said with one of the dips which perhaps kept her limbs "souple" as she said. "I'll be glad o' the dry sticks. The green do be makin' me cry. All the same I like to pick up sticks. Isn't it what the Lord sends us, what matter if they're green itself. 'Tis the chancey things I love havin'—the musharoons and the blackberries,—straight from God, I call them. But I couldn't let your Ladyship carry sticks for the like o' me. I hope I know me place better. If your Ladyship was to give me a hoosh up wid them? My back's not too bent if only they was to be tied in a bundle."

She performed a series of little dips which would have made Lady O'Gara smile at another time.

"The sticks are very light," she said. "Supposing we share the burden? Then we can talk as we go along. I suppose there never will be any news of Mr. Florence O'Hart, who went to Australia and was lost sight of?"

It was enough for Miss Brennan, who forgot even to protest when Lady O'Gara took the big bundle of sticks and gave her a few light ones to carry. She could always be set off chattering on the topic of the O'Hart who might have survived the family debacle and might come home one day to restore the fallen splendours of the place. Lady O'Gara walked as far as the lodge with the old woman, and laid the sticks away in the corner by the fireplace. It was a very short distance, though it counted as long to Miss Brennan.

As she went back along the road, the old woman, watching her disappear through the arch of orange and scarlet and pale fluttering gold, for the trees were not yet bare, talked to herself.

"There she goes!" she said, "an' she's proud to the proud an' humble to the humble. 'Tis the great day for you, Lizzie Brennan, to have the likes o' Lady O'Gara carryin' home your bits o' sticks. I hope I wasn't wrong sayin' what I did to the little lady. It seemed to get on her mind, for she wasn't listenin' to what I was sayin' for all she kep' her head towards me. Still an' all little Missie couldn't be without knowin' the light in a mother's eyes whin she seen it."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE DAUGHTER

Lady O'Gara went away quickly from the rusty gate overhung by ivy, not looking back to see how Miss Brennan watched her out of sight. She had not indeed heard one word of what the old woman had been saying about the O'Harts. She was dreadfully perturbed. The fair placidity of her face was broken up. In either cheek two spots of vivid colour pulsed. Seeing them one would have said she was in pain.

She hastened back along the tree-overhung road, over the dead leaves where the fine silver veining of last night's frost was yielding to a sodden dampness, to the gate of Waterfall Cottage.

She had half-expected to find it locked, but it was open. There was a thick carpet of dead leaves on the gravel sweep. Between the boughs sparsely clothed with leaves and the slender tree-trunks she caught a glimpse of the bronze and amber river running over its stones, or winding about the big dripping boulders that were in the bed of the stream. A damp, rheumatic place, she said to herself, although she loved the river; and its backwaters, full of wild duck and dabchick and the moorhens, were enchanting places.

The grounds which she remembered as neglected and overgrown had become orderly. The little beds cut in the turf were neat in their Winter bareness, despite a few dead leaves which had fluttered on to them. Her eyes fell on a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel lying on the grass by one of the beds. From the open mouth of a brown paper bag a bulb had partly rolled before it became stationary. There was a hole dug in the turf. Some one had been planting bulbs and had gone away leaving the task unfinished.

From the house-wall hung a branch of clematis torn down by the rough wind. A ladder stood close by. Some one had had the intention of nailing up the branch, and had not carried it into effect.

She lifted her hand to the knocker and found that the door yielded to her slight touch. It was open. For a second she had a wild thought that Miss Brennan might have been wandering in her wits—that Mrs. Wade, or Bridyeen Sweeney—she had come to calling her that in her mind—was still in the house.

She looked into the little hall. It was bright with a long ray from the white sun that peered below a cloud, seeming to her dazzled eyes surrounded by a coruscation of coloured rays. The white sun portended rain to come, probably in the afternoon.

Shot had pushed his way before her into the hall. She had almost forgotten that Shot had come with her when she had left the Poms at home because of the muddy roads. He had disappeared into Mrs. Wade's little parlour. The plume of his fine tail caught a flash from the sun's rays on its burnished bronze. She heard the dog whine.

No one answered her knock nor did Shot return, so, after a second's hesitation, she followed the dog.

She was not prepared for what she saw. The only occupant of the room beside the dog, who had dropped on to the hearthrug, and lay with his nose between his paws and his melancholy eyes watching, was Stella—Stella kneeling by a chair in an abandonment of grief, her face hidden.

The little figure kept its grace even in the huddled-up attitude. The face hidden in the chair, childishly, as though a child suffered pain, was lifted as Lady O'Gara touched the bronze-brown head. The misery of Stella's wide eyes shocked her. Stella's face was stained and disfigured by tears. The soft close hair, which she had taken to wearing plaited about her head, was ruffled and disordered.

"Stella, darling child!" Lady O'Gara said, with a gasp of consternation. She had never seen Stella before without brightness, the brightness of a bird. Now the small ivory pale face had lost the golden tints of its underlying brownness. The child was wan under the disfigurement of her tears.

She got up with a groping motion as though tears obscured her sight. She came to meet Lady O'Gara and held out her hands with a piteous gesture of grief.

"She has gone away," she said.

Her hands were chill in Mary O'Gara's warm clasp. The woman drew the girl to her, holding the cold hands against her breast with a soft motherliness.

"Now, tell me what is the matter?" she said, while her voice shook in the effort to be composed. "Where has Mrs. Wade gone to?"

"That is what I do not know, Lady O'Gara," Stella answered, with a catch of the breath. "I came to her as I have come every day of late. She was gone. I thought she would come back at first; but she has not come. While I stood looking out of the gate watching for her an old woman came by picking up sticks for her fire. She said"—something like a spasm shook the slender body and her face quivered—"that she, Mrs. Wade, was gone away. Do you know what she called her, Lady O'Gara? She called her my mother—my mother."

The suffering eyes were full upon her. Lady O'Gara found nothing to say that could serve any useful purpose.

"Yes, I know," she said aimlessly. "It was old Lizzie Brennan. She lives at that gate-lodge a little way down the road."

"She said my mother."

The eyes, grey in one light, brown in another; made a piteous appeal.

"How could Mrs. Wade be my mother?" Stella asked, with a quiver of the lip, clasping and unclasping her hands. "My mother died long ago. I am Stella de St. Maur, although Granny will have me called by her name. But I love Mrs. Wade; I love her. I have never loved any one in the same way."

Lady O'Gara took the bewildered head into her arms and stroked it with tender touches as though it was the head of a frightened bird, one of those birds that sometimes came in at her windows, and nearly killed themselves trying to escape before she could give them their liberty. She sought in a frightened way for something to say to the girl and could find nothing.

"Granny is so angry with me," Stella went on. "She has found out that I came here. She said she would not have me keep low company, that she was shocked to find I could slip away from her to a person not in my own class of life. She had noticed that I was always slipping away. She talked about throwbacks. What did she mean by that? She was very angry when she said it."

"Oh, I am sorry you made her angry, Stella." Mary O'Gara had found her tongue at last. She had no idea of the inadequacy of what she said. Her thoughts had gone swiftly back to the days when she had trembled before Grace Comerford's cold rages. Her thoughts, as though they were too tired to consider the situation of the moment, went on to Terence. Poor Terence! She remembered him red and white before his mother's anger, her tongue that stung like a whip, the more bitter where she roved.

"I ran away from her," Stella went on. "She told me to go to my room, as though I was a child. I went, but I got out of the window: it is not far from the ground. I came here only to find her gone. I had been running all the way thinking of how she would comfort me. She has taken nothing with her but Keep. I expect Keep followed her. I would not have minded anything if she had been here. The old woman called her my mother. Is she mad, Cousin Mary? How could Mrs. Wade be my mother?"

Her eyes asked an insistent question. Lady O'Gara was a truthful woman. The candour of her face did not belie her. She tried to avoid the eyes, lest they should drag the truth from her.

"She is only very old," she answered, haltingly. "Not mad, but perhaps..."

"The odd thing is,"—Stella put by what she had been about to say as a trivial thing,—"that I wish what the old woman said was true. I wish it with all my heart. She was like what I think a mother must be to me. I have always been running away to her, ever since you brought me first. She comforted me. I have always felt there was something I did not know. Granny would never tell me about my father and mother. If she is not my mother why should I feel all that about her? She made up to me for everything. And Sir Shawn was cold. He used to like me, but now he does not. He is afraid,"—a little colour came to her cheek,—"that I will marry Terry. He need not be afraid. If Mrs. Wade is my mother I shall not marry Terry. He can marry Eileen Creagh and please his father! Do not tell me she is not my mother."

Was the mother, the nameless mother, worth all that to her child? It seemed so.

"Oh, the poor boy!" Lady O'Gara said, with sudden tears, clasping her hands together. "Is he to have no word in it?"

"Not if I am Mrs. Wade's daughter. She told me how she lived with her grandmother who kept a shop in the village long ago. Of course Sir Shawn would not like it. I see that quite well, and I am not thinking of marrying Terry or any one. I am only thinking that Mrs. Wade may be my mother. I've always wanted a mother. How I used to envy the Italian children when I was little. They had such soft warm, dark-eyed mothers. And I had only Granny—and Miss Searle. Miss Searle was fond of me but she was often cross with me. Granny never loved me as a mother would have. I was sometimes afraid of her though she was good to me"—her cheeks were scarlet by this time,—"I am going to stay here and wait for Mrs. Wade to return. If she does not come I must go to look for her. Terry need not trouble about me, nor Sir Shawn...."

"Oh, the poor boy!" said Lady O'Gara again, with the soft illogicality that her lovers loved in her. "But, Stella, love, you cannot stay here. Think how people would talk. Come home with me. You can wait just as well at Castle Talbot. Every day you shall come and see if she has returned. It would be better, of course, for you to go back to Inch..."

"But Granny will lock me in my room. I cannot go to Castle Talbot, for Sir Shawn would look coldly at me and I should not like that."

Lady O'Gara was suddenly decided. "You cannot stay here, Stella," she said. "It is quite out of the question."

In her own mind was a whirl of doubt and fear. Who was going to tell Stella? Who was going to tell her? Apparently Stella suspected no worse than that she was peasant-born. She had not yet arrived at the point of asking for her father. At any moment she might ask. What was any one to answer?

"Come with me, dear child," she said. "My husband comes home dead-tired these hunting days, has some food and stumbles off to bed. I am all alone. We can have the days together. I will write to your Granny that you are paying me a visit. Let us lock up here."

Some one paused in the road outside the window to look in, leaning impudently on the green paling. It was a ragged tramp bearded like the pard.

As he shuffled on his way Lady O'Gara said with a rather nervous laugh.

"There, Stella! You see the impossibility of your being here alone. I wonder where that creature came from! We don't get many of his sort here. Think of the night in this place! We could not possibly allow it. Mrs. Wade is sure to come back. She would not have gone away leaving all her things here. Was the door open when you came to it?"

"It was locked. I found the key where she used to put it if she went out. She sometimes walked over there across the Mount, where the people do not walk because they are afraid of the O'Hart ghosts. I thought I would wait for her till she came back."

"Let us lock up and put the key where she left it. She is sure to return. The place does not look as if she were not coming back."

"Everything is in order," said Stella, a light of hope coming to her face. "I have been in her bedroom. The lamp is burning on her altar. There is a purse lying on her bed with money in it."

"She will come back," said Lady O'Gara.

There was a sound of carriage wheels which made two pairs of eyes turn towards the window.

"It is Granny," said Stella, drawing back into the shade of the window curtains. "And she is very angry. She is sitting up so straight and tall. When she is like that I am afraid of her. Is she coming here?"

"Do not be afraid; I will stay with you," said Lady O'Gara.

The carriage re-passed the window, going slowly and without its occupant. Almost immediately came the sound of the knocker on the little hall-door.



CHAPTER XIX

ANGER CRUEL AS DEATH

Lady O'Gara met Mrs. Comerford in the hall. Despite the shadows of all the greenery outside flung through the fanlight across the White Horse of Hanover, which stands in so many Irish fanlights, she could see that the lady was in one of the towering rages she remembered and had dreaded in her youth. Looking at her, with a stammering apology on her lips, she had a wandering memory of the day at Inch long ago when Terry had broken a reproduction of the Portland Vase. He had been a big boy of sixteen then and he had flatly refused to meet his mother, going away and laying perdu in a stable loft for two or three days till she had forgotten her anger in her fear for him.

"Stella is here, I suppose," said the icy voice. That suggestion of holding herself in check, which accompanied Mrs. Comerford's worst anger, had been a terrifying thing in Mary Creagh's experience of her.

"I believe it is you I have to thank for introducing her to her mother. What a fool I was to have come back. I thought that shame was covered up long ago. What a mother for Stella!"

She spoke with a fierce scorn. She had not troubled to lower her voice.

Lady O'Gara lifted her hand in a warning gesture, glancing fearfully back over her shoulder. But the angry woman did not heed her.

"Have you told her what her mother is, what she is?" she demanded furiously. "Did you understand what you were doing, Mary O'Gara? It was your husband who told me Bride Sweeney had come back, who urged me to get Stella away. I was mad ever to have come home."

"Hush, hush!" said Lady O'Gara, wringing her hands and whispering. "Stella is in there; she will hear you..."

"Perhaps I mean her to hear me. She shall know what sort of woman it is who has crept back here to disgrace her and me and to ruin her life."

There came out into the hall a little figure gliding like a ghost, Stella, her eyes wide and piteous, her pretty colour blanched.

"My mother is a good woman," she said, facing Mrs. Comerford. "You must never say a word against her. I would follow her through the world. I have had more happiness with her in those stolen meetings than you could ever give me."

A pale shaft of Winter sunshine stole through the low hall window, filtered through red dead leaves that gave it the colour of a dying sunset. It fell on Stella's hair, bringing out its bronzes. She had the warm bronze hair of her father's people. It came to Lady O'Gara suddenly that she and Stella had much the same colouring. In Terence Comerford it had been ruddier. Why, any one might have known that Stella was a Comerford by that colour; not the child of some dark Frenchman.

"You stand up to me better than your father ever did," said Mrs. Comerford in white and gasping fury. Had she no pity, Mary O'Gara asked herself; and remembered that Grace Comerford's anger was sheer madness while it lasted. She had always known it. She had a memory of how she and Terence had tried to screen each other when they were children together.

"You dare to tell me that your shameful mother is more to you than I am!" the enraged woman went on. "It shows the class you have sprung from. I took you out of the gutter. I should have left you there."

"Oh, hush! hush!" cried Lady O'Gara in deep distress. "You do not know what you are saying, Grace. For Heaven's sake, be silent."

Mrs. Comerford pushed her away with a force that hurt. A terrible thing about her anger was that while she said appalling things her voice had hardly lifted.

Stella looked at her in a bewildered way. "I do not understand," she said. "You always told me my father was a gentleman. You said little about my mother. What have you against my mother except that she was a poor governess?"

"All that was fiction," said Grace Comerford, with a terrible laugh. "Very poor fiction. I often wondered that any one believed it. Your father was my son, Terence Comerford. He disgraced himself." She was as white as a sheet by this time. "Your mother was the granddaughter of the woman who kept the public-house in Killesky."

"Then I am your granddaughter?"

"In nature, not in law. My son did not marry your mother."

Stella groped in the air with her hands. They were taken and pressed against Mary O'Gara's heart. Mary O'Gara's arms drew the stricken child close to her.

"Go," she said to the pale, evil-looking woman, in whom she hardly recognized Mrs. Comerford—"Go!—and ask God to forgive you and deliver you from your wicked temper. It has blighted your own life as well as your son's and your granddaughter's. Go!"

Mrs. Comerford put her hand to her throat. Her face darkened. She seemed as if she were going to fall. Then she controlled herself as by a mighty effort, turned and went out of the house. The bang of the hall-door as she went shook the little house. A second or two later her carriage passed the window, she sitting upright in it, her curious stateliness of demeanour unaltered.

Mary O'Gara did not look through the window to see her go. Her eyes were blind with tears as she bent over the child who was the innocent victim of others.

All her life afterwards she could never forget the anguish of poor Stella, who was like a thing demented. She could remember the objects that met her eyes as she held the two hot trembling hands to her with one hand while the other stroked Stella's ruffled hair. She felt as though she were holding the girl back by main force from the borderland beyond which lay total darkness. She could remember afterwards just the look of things—the Autumn leaves and berries in the blue jars on the chimney-piece; the convex glass leaning forward with its outspread eagle, mirroring her and Stella; Shot lying on his side on the hearthrug, now and again heaving a deep sigh. How pretty the room was, she kept thinking! What a quiet background for this human tragedy.

She knew that her heart was gabbling prayers for help, eagerly, insistently, while her lips only said over and over: "Hush, Stella! Be still, darling child!" and such tender foolish phrases.

At last the heart-broken crying was over. The girl was exhausted. Now and again a quiver passed through her where she sat with her face turned away from Lady O'Gara—but the terrible weeping was done.

"Come," Lady O'Gara said, at last. "We must find some water to bathe your face, you poor child. You are coming back with me to Castle Talbot. You are mine now. I shall not give you up again."

Stella shook her head; she stooped and kissed Lady O'Gara's hand as though she asked pardon. The swift dipping gesture like a bird's was too painful, recalling as it did the bright Stella of yesterday. Her hair was roughened like the feathers of a sick bird. Lady O'Gara, her hand passing softly over it, had felt the roughness with a pang.

"I am not yours, dear Lady O'Gara," she said. "I am no one's but my mother's. I am not going to Castle Talbot. I shall stay here for the present. If she does not come back I will go to look for her. All that other life is done with."

With a gesture of her little hands she put away all that had been hers till to-day, including Terry. His mother's heart began to ache anew with the thought of Terry. What would he say when he knew that Stella knew? Poor boy, he had a very gentle and faithful heart. Oh, what a tangle it all was, what a coil of things!

"But you can't stay here, darling child," she said tenderly. "How can you stay in this lonely little house by yourself? I will take you away somewhere where you do not know people, if you think that would be better. There are griefs that are more easily borne under the eyes of strangers. Let me see! There is a convent I know where you could be quiet for a little time, and I could trust the Reverend Mother—Mary Benedicta is her name; she is a cousin of mine and a dear friend—to be as loving to you as myself."

"She would be my ... father's cousin," said Stella; and a shudder ran through her. Then she said piteously:

"I never thought of my father as wicked."

Oh, poor Terence! How was she going to explain to the child to whom he had done this hideous wrong? Was it any use saying that Terence had always been good-natured? She remembered oddly after many years a day when he had turned away from the glazing eyes of a wood-pigeon he had shot. What use to tell such things to his daughter, whose life was laid in ruins by that sin of his youth? Those tragical eyes would confute her in the midst of her excuses. She could not yet make any plea for forgiveness for the dead man.

"Mother Mary Benedicta would be gentle with you," she said, "if you will not come to Castle Talbot. But, dear, no one need know. You shall take Eileen's place with me. You shall be my little daughter."