wn?" 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 ma