lone 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, Sha