ne is ever to say a word against my mother. She never did
anything wrong, my poor little mother, even if she was deceived. I
honour her more than any one in the world."

"Don't talk about it, child. No one will dare to say anything," Lady
O'Gara assured her, eager to stop something which she felt too
poignant, too intolerable to be said or heard.

Almost at once Stella was asleep. There came a little knock at the
door. It was Susan to say that, please would Lady O'Gara come down to
tea, while she sat with Miss Stella.

Again Lady O'Gara felt the strangeness of it all. There was Mrs. Wade
pouring out the tea, handing cakes and toast, doing the honours like
any assured woman in her drawing-room--except that she would not take
tea herself and could not be prevailed upon to sit down with them.

Once or twice Lady O'Gara thought she intercepted a soft, motherly
glance, with something of beaming approval in it, directed from Mrs.
Wade's eyes upon Terry. There was light upon Terry's dark head from
Mrs. Wade's eyes. The boy was shy, ill at ease. He was dying to ask
questions, but he felt that the situation craved wary walking. He
fidgeted and grew red: looked this way and that; was manifestly
uncomfortable.

None of them had heard the hall-door open nor any one enter, but Keep,
stretched on the hearthrug, growled. Shot lying under the table
answered him. From Michael, in the kitchen, came a sharp hysterical
barking. Michael was not so composed, not so entirely well-mannered as
his brothers of the famous Shot breed.

The door opened. In came Mrs. Comerford, tall, in her trailing blacks,
magnificent, the long veil of her bonnet floating about her. She
looked from one to the other of the group with amazement.

"I am surprised to find you here, Mary O'Gara," she said. "But perhaps
you come to see my child. Where is Stella? I have brought the
carriage to take her back to Inch."

"Oh, the poor child is too ill to be moved," said Lady O'Gara
tremblingly.

"You should be by your husband's side," Mrs. Comerford said, as though
Mary O'Gara was still the child she had loved and oppressed.

She had not looked at Mrs. Wade since the first bitter contemptuous
glance. Suddenly Mrs. Wade spoke with an air as though she swept the
others aside. She faced Mrs. Comerford with eyes as steady as her own.

"Stella will not go with you, she said. She stays with me."

"You! her nurse. I did not know the child was so