"I did not ask you to give her up," she said. "I do not take the
world's view of such things."

He looked at her with an incredible incredulous relief.

"You angel mother!" he said with a deep sigh. "I might have trusted
you. There is one thing. Stella must never know."

"She must never know," she repeated after him.

Her husband's foot sounded in the adjoining room and Terry went away
comforted. Shawn did not come in to say good-night to her as usual, by
which omission she conjectured the trouble of his mind. She prayed for
light, almost in despair of finding it, and slept, although she had
expected to lie awake, seeking unhappily a way out of this threatening
sorrow for all dear to her.

She awoke somewhere in the small hours. The moon was on her bed and
the air was very cold. She came awake suddenly, with a thought in her
mind so concrete that it was as though some one had spoken it aloud.

"Is it quite certain that Terence did not marry Bridyeen Sweeney?"

She caught at it as a drowning man catches at a straw. Her heart gave
a wild bound towards it. It was so thin, so frail a hope, that while
her fingers closed upon it she knew the futility. Again she slept, and
the thought was with her when she awoke in the grey morning.

CHAPTER XVII

MISS BRENNAN

She was grateful to the exigencies of the Service which made it
absolutely necessary for Terry to be back in barracks next day. He had
gone off after breakfast with Major Evelyn and Mr. Earnshaw, forbidding
her to come to see him off. Sir Shawn, who was High Sheriff for the
year and had to be in the county town for the opening of the Assizes,
took the party to the station on his way. She was left with the
morning on her hands.

How to use it? Oh, she had been impatient for them to be gone! The
hope which had seemed so frail in the night had strengthened and
failed, strengthened and failed many times since. This morning it was
strong within her. It was founded on so little. Terry had called
Terence Comerford hard names last night. A villain. She did not think
Terence was a villain. He had been a kindly, affectionate fellow, very
quick to be angry about a cruelty to any helpless thing. A good heart:
oh, yes, Terence had had a good heart: but, even to her had come the
dreary knowledge that good-hearted people can be very cruel in their
sins.

She had looked at it from many points of view. Supposing Terence had
meant to marry t