harming 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 kin