A few days passed by and Mrs. Wade had not returned. Mrs. Comerford had written an icy message to Mary O'Gara.

"When Stella comes to her right mind this house is open to her. I have said to my servants that she is with you. I was once a truthful woman."

Reading this brief epistle Mary O'Gara had said to herself that it was lucky there was distance enough between Inch and Castle Talbot; also that though she considered herself a truthful woman there was nothing she would not say in order to shield Stella from gossiping tongues. She was bitterly angry with Grace Comerford for the cruel and evil temper which had done so much hurt to an innocent thing.

"Does she think," she asked herself hotly, "that so easily Stella will forget her cruelty? I do not believe the child will ever go back to her."

She had written to Mary Benedicta about the case, giving her a cautious account of poor Stella's plight, abstaining from mentioning Terence Comerford's part in the story. She could have told that: she could not write it. Mary Benedicta would think that Stella's trouble came from the fictitious French father. There was little or no communication between the nun and Mrs. Comerford, who had quarrelled with her over her choice of a conventual life long ago.

Mary Benedicta had answered the letter with another full of the milk and honey of a compassionate tenderness.

The best solution of the problem Lady O'Gara could find was that Stella should go for a time at least to the Convent. Terry had not written. Terry would have his say in the matter presently. He had gone off chilled for the time by Stella's disinclination towards him: but he would come back. If he only knew Stella's plight at this moment he would surely break all the barriers to get back to her.

Poor Stella's plight was indeed a sad one. Susan Horridge, watching her like a faithful dog, reported that she ate little, that she walked up and down her room at night when she ought to have been sleeping, that she started when spoken to, that she spent long hours staring before her piteously, doing nothing.

"If Mrs. Wade don't come back soon the young lady will either go after her or she'll have a breakdown," Susan said.

Sometimes Lady O'Gara wondered how much Susan knew or suspected, but there was in her manner an entire absence of curiosity, of a sense that anything out of the way was happening, that was invaluable in a crisis like this. Lady O'Gara thought more highly of Susan every day. The weather had turned very wet, but Waterfall Cottage glowed with brightness and roaring fires of turf and wood. The rain and darkness were shut out. Stella could not have been in better hands.

About the fifth day came a hunting morning. The meet was fixed for a distant part of the country. Lady O'Gara got up in the dark of the morning to superintend her husband's cup of tea, to see that his flask was filled and his sandwiches to his liking.

"I wish you had been coming out too, Mary," he said wistfully as he stood on the steps drawing on his gloves. "You are growing lazy, old lady."

"I'll come out with you on Saturday," she said, and patted his shoulder.

Patsy was late in bringing round Black Prince, the beautiful spirited horse which was Sir Shawn's favourite hunter that season. It was unlike Patsy to be late. The first grey dawn was coming lividly over the sky. Standing in the lamplit hall Mary O'Gara looked out and caught the shiver of the little wind which brings the day.

"I'll be late at the Wood of the Hare," Sir Shawn said, fuming a little. "I don't want to press the Prince with a hard day before him."

Still Patsy did not come.

"Good-bye, darling," Sir Shawn said at last. "Go back to bed and have a good sleep before breakfast. I'll see what's up with Patsy."

She had gone upstairs before she heard her husband ride out of the stable yard. So Patsy had been late. Was it possible he had overslept? It would be so unlike Patsy, who, especially of a hunting morning, had always slept the fox's sleep.

She had a long day before her, with many things to do. She ought to write to Terry, but she knew the things Terry expected to hear. There had been a letter from him, asking roundly for news of Stella.

"Why don't you write?" it asked. "Are you going to treat me like a child as Father does? I've made up my mind about Stella. I will marry her, if she will have me; and she shall never know anything from me. Are you looking after her, keeping her happy? For Heaven's sake don't take Father's view of it! That would be ruin to everything, but I warn you, that if you do, it will not alter me. Tell me what she says, how she looks. Has her colour come back? Does she speak of me? There are a thousand things I want to know."

There had been a postscript to the letter.

"By the way, Evelyn has discovered that the man who got the lakh of rupees,—you remember?—had been rather badly treated by Eileen, or so Evelyn's informant said. It is a she—a cousin of Evelyn's who is married to somebody up there. Evelyn says he will come again to Castle Talbot if you ask him. He says the duck-shooting was splendid—and he congratulated me on you—darling. I did myself proud. Just imagine,—Evelyn!"

She did not know how to answer his letter. It was not in her to put off the boy with a letter which should disappoint him. She imagined him running through it with a blank face, looking for what she had not written. No: she could not write without telling him the truth: and the truth would make the boy miserable. She supposed it would have to be told—presently, but she would wait till then. She was not one to deal in half-truths and subterfuges.

She went forth after breakfast with an intention of seeing Stella, and afterwards going on to old Lizzie Brennan, who required some looking after, in cold weather especially. She had rather mad fits of wandering over the country, from which she would return soaked through with rain, hungry and exhausted. More than once Lady O'Gara had discovered her after these expeditions, choking with bronchitis, in a fireless room, too weak to light a fire or prepare food for herself. Lady Conyers, a neighbour of Castle Talbot at Mount Esker, had tried to induce Lizzie to go into the workhouse, with many arguments as to the comfort which awaited her there. But Lizzie was about as much inclined for the workhouse as the free bird for the cage, and, rather to Lady Conyers' indignation, Lady O'Gara had abetted the culprit, saying that she would look after her.

There was not much to be done with Stella, who had begun to look sharpened in the face and her eyes very bright. Susan repeated that her charge did not sleep. She had gone in to her half a dozen times during the night and found her wide-eyed on the pillow, staring at the ceiling.

"I never see any one take on so," Susan said. "Seems to me if Missie don't get what she wants she w............