could be,
how the fear of them overclouded the lives of children, defenceless
before her.

"You wanted her," Mrs. Wade indicated Lady O'Gara--"for Terence's wife.
It was not likely you could have put up with me instead."

"She preferred Shawn O'Gara," said Mrs. Comerford, with a queer
bitterness. "I might have turned to you who loved Terence. I had
nothing against Shawn O'Gara. He loved Terence better than a brother.
I meant not to lose sight of you though I forbade you ever to claim the
child. You disappeared from the place where I had sent you. I did not
mean you to want for anything. After all you were Terence's."

Her voice ended on a queer note of tenderness.

Suddenly Terry O'Gara spoke, coming out of his corner, the bright light
on his glowing eager young face.

"Stella will not refuse to listen to me, now," he said. "You will not
refuse me Stella, Mrs. Comerford?"

He addressed Mrs. Wade. The name sounded most strangely in the ears of
those who heard it. The woman addressed coloured and looked at him
with softly parted lips. Her eyes were suddenly dewy.

"If it had been as ... as ... the poor darling thought," the boy
blushed vividly, averting his gaze from the face that was so like
Stella's in its softness and wonder and shyness--"it would have made no
difference. My mother knows. It would have made no difference. The
only barrier would have been Stella herself. I was afraid of Stella's
will."

"Stella must decide for herself. Thank God, she did not turn from her
mother. I thought I would go away and that this tale need never be
told. I knew I had been wrong to come back. I never thought any one
would have had the heart to tell my child that story."

She turned suddenly accusing eyes on Mrs. Comerford.

"Even yet she does not know that I was married to her father," she went
on. "But she does not shrink from me. My little daughter! That such
an anguish as that should ever have come to her! She has chosen me
even so before all the world!"

She lifted her head proudly as she said it. Then her expression
softened as she saw the shadow on Terry O'Gara's candid face.

"Give her time," she said. "If your father and mother will not mind
her being my daughter--why--I think you should ask her."

"Where have you been hiding yourself all this time?" Mrs. Comerford
asked, with a certain roughness. "If I had known where you were I
might have extracted this story from you earlier. I s