s.

The best solution of the problem Lady O'Gara could find was that Stella
should go for a time at least to the Convent. Terry had not written.
Terry would have his say in the matter presently. He had gone off
chilled for the time by Stella's disinclination towards him: but he
would come back. If he only knew Stella's plight at this moment he
would surely break all the barriers to get back to her.

Poor Stella's plight was indeed a sad one. Susan Horridge, watching
her like a faithful dog, reported that she ate little, that she walked
up and down her room at night when she ought to have been sleeping,
that she started when spoken to, that she spent long hours staring
before her piteously, doing nothing.

"If Mrs. Wade don't come back soon the young lady will either go after
her or she'll have a breakdown," Susan said.

Sometimes Lady O'Gara wondered how much Susan knew or suspected, but
there was in her manner an entire absence of curiosity, of a sense that
anything out of the way was happening, that was invaluable in a crisis
like this. Lady O'Gara thought more highly of Susan every day. The
weather had turned very wet, but Waterfall Cottage glowed with
brightness and roaring fires of turf and wood. The rain and darkness
were shut out. Stella could not have been in better hands.

About the fifth day came a hunting morning. The meet was fixed for a
distant part of the country. Lady O'Gara got up in the dark of the
morning to superintend her husband's cup of tea, to see that his flask
was filled and his sandwiches to his liking.

"I wish you had been coming out too, Mary," he said wistfully as he
stood on the steps drawing on his gloves. "You are growing lazy, old
lady."

"I'll come out with you on Saturday," she said, and patted his shoulder.

Patsy was late in bringing round Black Prince, the beautiful spirited
horse which was Sir Shawn's favourite hunter that season. It was
unlike Patsy to be late. The first grey dawn was coming lividly over
the sky. Standing in the lamplit hall Mary O'Gara looked out and
caught the shiver of the little wind which brings the day.

"I'll be late at the Wood of the Hare," Sir Shawn said, fuming a
little. "I don't want to press the Prince with a hard day before him."

Still Patsy did not come.

"Good-bye, darling," Sir Shawn said at last. "Go back to bed and have
a good sleep before breakfast. I'll see what's up with Patsy."

She had gone upstairs before s