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 w