here. She said she would not have me keep low company, that she
was shocked to find I could slip away from her to a person not in my
own class of life. She had noticed that I was always slipping away.
She talked about throwbacks. What did she mean by that? She was very
angry when she said it."

"Oh, I am sorry you made her angry, Stella." Mary O'Gara had found her
tongue at last. She had no idea of the inadequacy of what she said.
Her thoughts had gone swiftly back to the days when she had trembled
before Grace Comerford's cold rages. Her thoughts, as though they were
too tired to consider the situation of the moment, went on to Terence.
Poor Terence! She remembered him red and white before his mother's
anger, her tongue that stung like a whip, the more bitter where she
roved.

"I ran away from her," Stella went on. "She told me to go to my room,
as though I was a child. I went, but I got out of the window: it is
not far from the ground. I came here only to find _her_ gone. I had
been running all the way thinking of how she would comfort me. She has
taken nothing with her but Keep. I expect Keep followed her. I would
not have minded anything if she had been here. The old woman called
her my _mother_. Is she mad, Cousin Mary? How _could_ Mrs. Wade be my
mother?"

Her eyes asked an insistent question. Lady O'Gara was a truthful
woman. The candour of her face did not belie her. She tried to avoid
the eyes, lest they should drag the truth from her.

"She is only very old," she answered, haltingly. "Not mad, but
perhaps..."

"The odd thing is,"--Stella put by what she had been about to say as a
trivial thing,--"that I _wish_ what the old woman said was true. I
_wish_ it with all my heart. She was like what I think a mother must
be to me. I have always been running away to her, ever since you
brought me first. She _comforted_ me. I have always felt there was
something I did not know. Granny would never tell me about my father
and mother. If she is not my mother why should I feel all that about
her? She made up to me for everything. And Sir Shawn was cold. He
used to like me, but now he does not. He is afraid,"--a little colour
came to her cheek,--"that I will marry Terry. He need not be afraid.
If Mrs. Wade is my mother I shall not marry Terry. He can marry Eileen
Creagh and please his father! Do not tell me she is not my mother."

Was the mother, the nameless mother, worth all that