Lady O'Gara's first terror was of a scene which should waken Stella and alarm her in her weak state. She made as if to stand between the two women: she looked fearfully for the signs of the rising storm as she remembered them in Mrs. Comerford, the heaving breast, the working hands, the dilated nostrils. But there were none of these signs. Instead Mrs. Comerford was curiously quiet.

For a moment the quietness seemed to possess the little house. In the silence you might have heard a pin drop. Shot sighed windily under the table and Keep laid his nose along his paws and turned eyes of worship on his mistress. Long afterwards Mary O'Gara remembered these things and how the wind sprang up and drove a few dead leaves against the window with a faint tinkling sound.

Then the momentary tense silence was broken.

"You are Stella's mother—Terence's…"

What she would have said was for ever unsaid.

"Your son's wife, Mrs. Comerford," said Mrs. Wade proudly. She held out her hand with a gesture which had a strange dignity. On the wedding finger was a thin gold ring.

There was a silence, a gasp. Mrs. Comerford leant across the table and stared at the ring.

"Terence's wife!" she repeated slowly. "You don't expect me to believe that! Why, my God, if it were true"—her voice rose to a sudden anguish—"if it were true, if it could be true—why didn't you tell me long ago? Why did you let me go on thinking such things of my boy? I won't believe it. I tell you I won't believe it. You would have been quick enough to step into my place, old Judy Dowd's granddaughter! Is it likely you'd have gone all these years without your child—in disgrace—the mother of a child born out of wedlock? It's a lie—Bride Sweeney, it's a lie!"

"It is not a lie," Mrs. Wade said wearily. "I know it seems
incredible. There is no difficulty about proof. We were married in
Dublin, when Terence was at the Royal Barracks and I was staying with
Maeve McCarthy, a school-friend. She was my bridesmaid."

Mrs. Comerford put a bewildered hand to her head. Her other hand clutched the rail of a chair as though her head reeled. Lady O'Gara and Terence looked on as spectators, out of it, though passionately interested. Lady O'Gara gave a quick glance at her son. There was a strange light on his face. He put out his hand and steadied Mrs. Comerford, helping her to a chair. As she sat down, the long black draperies floating about her, she looked more than ever a tragedy queen.

"You have your marriage certificate?" she asked with an effort.

"I have never parted with it."

"If you are not mad, will you tell me why you masqueraded as my son's mistress when you were his wife?"

"Because your son was so afraid of you—you may believe it or not as you will—that he made me swear never to tell it to any one till he gave me leave. Poor Terence! He did not live to give me leave. He had made up his mind to tell you. He said our child should be born in his old home. Then he was killed, and my baby was born, and the world was at an end for me. I only wanted to go away and die somewhere. My grandmother had been terrible; and then you came and you were terrible too: and you took away my baby. I don't think I knew or thought how it was going to affect the baby. You said that she would be brought up to inherit Inch if I never claimed her. I was very innocent, very ignorant. I kept the oath I had sworn to Terence. I have kept it all these years."

"He need not have been afraid of me," Mrs. Comerford said in a heart-broken voice. "I loved him so much that I could have forgiven him his marriage. Do you think that I would have kept your place from you all these years? That I would have lied and lied to keep the world from knowing what I thought the shameful secret of Stella's birth?"

"I think nothing. I only know that he who was afraid of nothing else was afraid of your anger."

The two women stared at each other. Something of pity came into Mrs.
Wade's face.

"It might be that he loved you so well he couldn't bear to bring you trouble," she said. "I was only a poor girl from the village, Judy Dowd's grand-daughter, who served in the bar of the little public-house. It would have been a bitter story for you to hear, and you so proud."

"Terence would have raised his wife to his own station. What insanity! I was always hot-tempered but I soon cooled and forgave. What was there in my anger for my six-foot son to be afraid of?"

Mary O'Gara remembered how Terence shook with terror of his mother's anger after some boyish escapade. Grace Comerford deceived herself! Apparently she had no idea of how terrible her fits of temper 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 litt............