I
wonder where that creature came from! We don't get many of his sort
here. Think of the night in this place! We could not possibly allow
it. Mrs. Wade is sure to come back. She would not have gone away
leaving all her things here. Was the door open when you came to it?"

"It was locked. I found the key where she used to put it if she went
out. She sometimes walked over there across the Mount, where the
people do not walk because they are afraid of the O'Hart ghosts. I
thought I would wait for her till she came back."

"Let us lock up and put the key where she left it. She is sure to
return. The place does not look as if she were not coming back."

"Everything is in order," said Stella, a light of hope coming to her
face. "I have been in her bedroom. The lamp is burning on her altar.
There is a purse lying on her bed with money in it."

"She will come back," said Lady O'Gara.

There was a sound of carriage wheels which made two pairs of eyes turn
towards the window.

"It is Granny," said Stella, drawing back into the shade of the window
curtains. "And she is very angry. She is sitting up so straight and
tall. When she is like that I am afraid of her. Is she coming here?"

"Do not be afraid; I will stay with you," said Lady O'Gara.

The carriage re-passed the window, going slowly and without its
occupant. Almost immediately came the sound of the knocker on the
little hall-door.

CHAPTER XIX

ANGER CRUEL AS DEATH

Lady O'Gara met Mrs. Comerford in the hall. Despite the shadows of all
the greenery outside flung through the fanlight across the White Horse
of Hanover, which stands in so many Irish fanlights, she could see that
the lady was in one of the towering rages she remembered and had
dreaded in her youth. Looking at her, with a stammering apology on her
lips, she had a wandering memory of the day at Inch long ago when Terry
had broken a reproduction of the Portland Vase. He had been a big boy
of sixteen then and he had flatly refused to meet his mother, going
away and laying _perdu_ in a stable loft for two or three days till she
had forgotten her anger in her fear for him.

"Stella is here, I suppose," said the icy voice. That suggestion of
holding herself in check, which accompanied Mrs. Comerford's worst
anger, had been a terrifying thing in Mary Creagh's experience of her.

"I believe it is you I have to thank for introducing her to her mother.
What a fool I was to hav