ome to you you
exorcise all my troubles. You are the angel before whom the blue
devils flee away."

She did not ask him further about his visitor. So many of them were
troublesome. She often wondered at Shawn's patience with the people.
The family quarrels over land were apt to be the worst of all: but
there were other things hardly less disagreeable.

"Poor Shawn!" she said tenderly. "Sit down by me and let me smoothe
that line out of your forehead! It threatens to become permanent."

She stooped, half playfully, to him as he sat down beside her leaning
his head back against a cushion, and touched his forehead with her
finger-tips gently.

"Go on doing that, Mary," he said. "It seems to smoothe a tangle out
of my brain. I cannot tell you how restful it is. I saw Terry
off--and the others. The boy looked rather down in the mouth. What
have you been doing all day?"

It was a quiet hour. She had dressed early on purpose to have this
hour. No one had business in the room till the dressing bell rang.
She had learnt by long use to watch his moods. She knew her own power
over him, to soothe, to assuage. The moment was propitious. So she
told him the tale of the day's happenings, in a quiet easy flow, now
and again patting his hand or stroking his forehead with her delicate
finger-tips.

"Good Lord, what a kettle of fish!" he groaned when she had finished.
"And you take it so easily, Mary! I wish to the Lord, Grace Comerford
had never come back. It was an ill day."

She almost echoed the wish. Then she found herself, to her amazement,
setting Stella against all the trouble, putting her in the balance
against all that had happened and might happen. To her amazement
Stella counted against all the rest. She was just the little daughter
she had wanted all her days--to stay with her when the insistent world
snatched her boy from her. She acknowledged to herself that she was
jealous of the woman who was Stella's real mother, whom the girl had
chosen before everything, every one else.

She sought in her own mind, with what her husband called her incurable
optimism, for a bright side to this dark trouble and could find none.
She must leave it where she left everything, at the foot of the altar.
God could unpick the black knot of Stella's fate. He could smooth out
the tangle. She must only pray and hope.

She had meant to talk the matter out thoroughly with Shawn. She had so
often found that light an