e come back. I thought that shame was covered
up long ago. What a mother for Stella!"

She spoke with a fierce scorn. She had not troubled to lower her voice.

Lady O'Gara lifted her hand in a warning gesture, glancing fearfully
back over her shoulder. But the angry woman did not heed her.

"Have you told her what her mother is, what _she_ is?" she demanded
furiously. "Did you understand what you were doing, Mary O'Gara? It
was your husband who told me Bride Sweeney had come back, who urged me
to get Stella away. I was mad ever to have come home."

"Hush, hush!" said Lady O'Gara, wringing her hands and whispering.
"Stella is in there; she will hear you..."

"Perhaps I mean her to hear me. She shall know what sort of woman it
is who has crept back here to disgrace her and me and to ruin her life."

There came out into the hall a little figure gliding like a ghost,
Stella, her eyes wide and piteous, her pretty colour blanched.

"My mother is a good woman," she said, facing Mrs. Comerford. "You
must never say a word against her. I would follow her through the
world. I have had more happiness with her in those stolen meetings
than you could ever give me."

A pale shaft of Winter sunshine stole through the low hall window,
filtered through red dead leaves that gave it the colour of a dying
sunset. It fell on Stella's hair, bringing out its bronzes. She had
the warm bronze hair of her father's people. It came to Lady O'Gara
suddenly that she and Stella had much the same colouring. In Terence
Comerford it had been ruddier. Why, any one might have known that
Stella was a Comerford by that colour; not the child of some dark
Frenchman.

"You stand up to me better than your father ever did," said Mrs.
Comerford in white and gasping fury. Had she no pity, Mary O'Gara
asked herself; and remembered that Grace Comerford's anger was sheer
madness while it lasted. She had always known it. She had a memory of
how she and Terence had tried to screen each other when they were
children together.

"You dare to tell me that your shameful mother is more to you than I
am!" the enraged woman went on. "It shows the class you have sprung
from. I took you out of the gutter. I should have left you there."

"Oh, hush! hush!" cried Lady O'Gara in deep distress. "You do not know
what you are saying, Grace. For Heaven's sake, be silent."

Mrs. Comerford pushed her away with a force that hurt. A terrible
thing about