The doctor was well satisfied with Sir Shawn's condition. While he
examined him the patient opened his eyes. How dark they looked in the
white face! They rested on the doctor with recognition, then passed on
to his wife, and he smiled.

"Have I ... been very troublesome?" he asked. "I remember ... now ...
that brute, Spitfire ... always was a brute...."

The eyes grew vague again and closed, but the lips kept their faint
smile.

"He'll sleep a lot," said the doctor. "Much the best thing for him
too. He had run himself down even before the accident. He'll be able
to talk more presently."

He had taken her out to the corridor before he told the latest, most
sensational news.

"I found a new nurse by the little girl's bedside this morning," he
said. "Apparently she is the lady who occupied the Cottage--Mrs. Wade.
The patient seems wonderfully improved. Hardly any fever; she kept
watching her new nurse as though she dreaded letting her out of her
sight."

"Ah--that is good!"

There was another lightening of the heaviness of Lady O'Gara's heart.
Some mothers in her place might have had an unacknowledged feeling that
Stella's death would not be altogether the worst solution of a
difficult situation. It would have been easy to think with a kindly
pity of how much better it would be for the poor child without a name
to drift quietly out on the great sea. Not so Lady O'Gara. Her whole
being had been in suffering for the suffering of this young thing who
had crept into her heart. Now she was lifted up with the thought of
Stella coming back to life and health. For the rest it was in the
future. With God be the future!

Terry was late for lunch. Patsy Kenny had begged and prayed to be
allowed to help in "lookin' after the master," so he took the afternoon
watch, setting Lady O'Gara free to be with her son. It was not like
Terry to be late for lunch. He was a very good trencherman and had
always been the first to laugh at his own appetite. But to-day he did
not come. His mother waited, turning over the newspapers which came
late to Castle Talbot. He must have gone farther afield than he had
intended. She was not nervous. What was there to be nervous about?
Terry had forgotten in the joy of rabbiting that the luncheon hour was
gone by: that was all.

At last he came, almost simultaneously with a wild idea in his mother's
head that he might have wandered towards Waterfall Cottage and somehow
discove