After his examination Lady O'Gara told him something of Stella's case.
He did not ask for more than he was told. He did not even show
surprise at hearing that Stella had a mother living.

"Ah," he said, "if her mother's face could be the first thing for her
eyes to rest upon when she comes out of that bad dream, it would do a
good deal to restore her sanity."

"Unfortunately we do not know where the mother is," Lady O'Gara said
sorrowfully.

"I will give the patient something to keep her quiet to-night," the
doctor went on. "Perhaps you could send some one over to my house for
the medicine."

"Patsy Kenny will go."

"Now let me take you back to the house. It is growing dusk. Is there
any one you could send to stay with Mrs. ... Mrs. ...?"

"Susan Horridge. Oh, yes. I can send Margaret McKeon, my maid. She
never talks."

The doctor gave no indication of any curiosity as to why no talking
made Margaret McKeon a suitable person for this emergency. The world
was full of odd things, even such a remote bit of it as lay about
Killesky. The place buzzed with gossip. Every one in it knew already
the story of the charge made by the drunken tramp against Sir Shawn
O'Gara. It had reached Dr. Costello at an early stage in its progress.
He remembered the death of Terence Comerford and the gossip of that
time. In his own mind he was piecing the story together: but he was
discretion itself. No one should be the wiser for him.

He was on his way home, having left Lady O'Gara safely at her own door,
when he did something that very nearly ran the bicycle with the
side-car into the bog. Patsy, his passenger, merely remarked calmly:
"A horse 'ud have more sinse than this hijeous thing."

The doctor, piecing together the details of the old tragedy to explain
the new, had had an illumination as blinding as the flash of lightning
widen reveals a whole countryside for a moment before it falls again to
impenetrable blackness.

"By Jove," he had said to himself, "Stella is Terry's daughter. And
the woman at Waterfall Cottage--they will talk even though I don't
encourage them--is Bridyeen Sweeney that was. I wonder some of them
didn't chance on that."

He murmured excuses to Patsy for the peril he had narrowly escaped.

"She answers to my hand like a horse," he said. "That time I was
dreaming and I pulled her a bit too suddenly."

As he got out at his own door he said something half aloud; being a
solitary bach