After Sir Felix had gone off, profuse in his apologies, and anathematizing Mr. Fury's zeal, Lady O'Gara went to a desk in the corner of the drawing-room, a Sheraton desk which she did not often use. She found a tiny key and unlocked a little cupboard door between the pigeon-holes. She felt about the back of one of the three little drawers it contained and brought out a sliding well, one of the innocent secret receptacles which are so easily discovered by any one who has the clue. She drew out a little bundle of yellow papers from it—newspaper cuttings. These she took to the lamp and proceeded to read with great care.

Once or twice she knitted her fair brows over something as she read; but, on the whole, she seemed satisfied as she put the papers back into their secret place, locked the little door and put away the key.

Then she remembered that she had not given Patsy his orders.

She went to Sir Shawn's office-room and wrote them out. While she put the second one in its envelope Patsy tapped at the door and came in, closing it carefully behind him.

"No wan 'ud be expectin' the master home from the Wood o' the Hare yet," he said. "'Tis a good step an' Sir John Fitzgerald would be very sorry to part with him after he'd carried him in for his lunch. Maybe 'tis staying to dinner he'd be."

Lady O'Gara looked at her watch.

"It's quite early," she said; "not much after six."

"'Tis a dark night," said Patsy. "Maybe 'tis the way they'll be persuadin' him to wait till the moon rises. Sorra a bit she'll show her face till nine to-night."

Mary O'Gara's heart sank. She knew that Patsy was nervous.

"He may come at any moment," she said. "I don't think he'll wait for the rising of the moon."

"It isn't like the troubled times," said Patsy, "an' you listenin' here, an' me listenin' by the corner o' the stable-yard where the wind brings the sounds from the bog-road whin 'tis in that quarter. Your Ladyship had great courage. An' look at all you must ha' went through whin we was at the War!"

He looked compassionately at her as he went towards the door.

"I'll be sendin' a boy wid this message," he said. "Or maybe Georgie an' me would be steppin' down there. It's lonesome for the child to be sittin' over his books all day whin I'm busy."

He opened the door, looked into the empty hall and came back.

"I wouldn't be troublin' the master wid them ould stories," he said.
"Didn't I tell my story fair!"

"You did, Patsy. There were some things in it were not in the evidence you gave at the time."

"See that now! T'ould mimiry of me's goin'. Still, there wasn't much differ?"

There was some anxiety in his voice as he asked the question.

"Nothing much. You said nothing long ago of running towards the upper road after Sir Shawn."

"Sure where else would I be runnin' to? It isn't the lower road I'd be takin'—now is it your Ladyship! It wouldn't be likely."

"I suppose it wouldn't," she said, slightly smiling.

"I remember it like as if it was yesterday, the sound of the horse's hoofs climbin' and then the clatter that broke out on the lower road whin Spitfire took the bit between his teeth an' bolted. I'll put the stopper on that villain's lies. I'd like to think the master wouldn't be troubled wid them."

"I'm afraid he'll have to hear them, Patsy. Sir Felix was obliged to issue a summons. It might have been worse if Sir Felix had not been a friend."

"The divil shweep that man, Fury," said Patsy with ferocity. "If he hadn't been a busy-body an' stirrer-up of trouble, he'd have drowned that villain in a bog-hole."

He went off, treading delicately on his toes, which was his way of showing sympathetic respect, and Lady O'Gara returned to the drawing-room.

She was very uneasy. She tried reading, but her thoughts came between her and the page. Writing was no more helpful. She went to the piano. Music at least, if it did not soothe her, would prevent her straining her ears in listening for sounds outside.

The butler came and took away the tea-things, made up the fire and departed in the noiseless way of the trained servant. Her hands on the keys broke unconsciously into the solemn music of Chopin's Funeral March. She took her hands off the piano with a shiver as she realized her choice and began something else, a mad, merry reel to which the feet could scarcely refrain from dancing. But her heart did not dance. The music fretted her, keeping her from listening. After a while she gave up the pretence of it and went back to the fireside, to the sofa on which she and Shawn had sat side by side while she comforted him. She could have thought she felt the weight of his head on her shoulder, that she smelt the peaty smell of his home-spuns. He would be disturbed, poor Shawn, by what she had to tell him. It would be an intolerable ordeal if he should be dragged to the Petty Sessions Court to refute the preposterous charge of being concerned in the death of the man he had loved more than a brother.. Poor Shawn! She listened. Was that the sound of a horse coming? He would be so disturbed!

It was only the wind that was getting up. She drew her work-table to her and took out a pair of Shawn's stockings that needed darning. Margaret McKeon's eyes had been failing of late, and Lady O'Gara had taken on joyfully the mending of her husband's things. Her darning was a thing of beauty. She had said it soothed her when Sir Shawn would have taken the stocking from her because it tired her dear eyes.

Nothing could have seemed quieter than the figure of the lady sitting mending stockings by rosy lamplight. She had put on her spectacles. Terry had cried out in dismay when he had first seen her wear them, and she had laughed and put them away; her beautiful eyes were really rather short-sighted and she had never spared them.

But while she sat so quietly she was gripped by more terrors than one. She was trying to keep down the thought, the question, that would return no matter how she strove to push it away—had she been told all the truth about Terence Comerford's death?

There had always been things that puzzled her, things Shawn had said under the stress of emotion, and when he talked in sleep. There had been a night when he had cried out:

"My God, he should not have laughed. If he had wanted to live he should not have laughed. When he laughed I felt I must kill him."

She had wakened him up, telling him he had had a nightmare and had thought no more about it. There were other things he had said in the stress ............