t will
be great company in the house at night. A little dog like that would
be almost like a child. And in the daytime he'd give me word if any
one was coming."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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