r relation towards Stella to have left the child so hungry for
mother-love. Again there was something that puzzled her. Stella
seemed to have forgotten everything except the fact of her mother's
disappearance. Did she understand the facts of her birth, all that
they meant to her and how the world regarded them? Or was it that
these things were swallowed up in the girl's passion of love and loss?

Stella started out at a great pace, but lagged after a little while,
and turned with an apology to Lady O'Gara.

"I feel as though I had had influenza," she said. "I suppose it's
being in the house so much and not eating or sleeping well. Oh, I must
not get ill, Lady O'Gara; for I cannot stay here unless my mother comes
back..."

"I thought you liked us all, Stella," Lady O'Gara said, rather sadly.
"You seemed very happy with us always."

"That was before my mother came, before I knew that she and I belonged
to each other and were only a trouble to people."

She harped on old Lizzie's phrase.

"My poor little mother!" she said. "All that time I was living in
luxury my mother was working. Her poor hands are the hands of a
working woman. I cannot bear to look at them."

"She was in America, was she not?" Lady O'Gara asked, by way of saying
something.

"She never spoke of America. I do not think she was there. She was
housekeeper somewhere--to a priest. She said he was such a good old
man, innocent and simple. He had a garden with bee-hives, and a poodle
dog she was very fond of. She said it had been a refuge to her for
many years; and she did not like leaving the good old man, but
something drew her back. She was hungry for news of me."

The child was not ashamed of her mother. Perhaps she did not
understand. Lady O'Gara was glad. She remembered how Shawn had always
said that Bridyeen was innocent and simple.

They had arrived at the gate, one half of it swinging loose from the
hinges; the stone balls, once a-top of the gate-posts, were down on the
ground, having brought a portion of the gate-post with them.

Lady O'Gara glanced at the lodge. It had been a pretty place once,
with diamond-paned windows and a small green trellised porch, over
which woodbine and roses had trailed. There were still one or two
golden spikes of the woodbine, and a pale monthly rose climbed to the
top of the porch to the roof; but the creepers which grew round the
windows had been torn down and were lying on the grass-gr