he strain in the situation. Lady
O'Gara laughed. She had sometimes said that she laughed when she felt
like to die with trouble. People had taken it for an exaggerated
statement. What cause could Mary O'Gara have to feel like dying with
trouble? Even though Shawn O'Gara was a melancholy gentleman, Mary
seemed very well able to enjoy life.

"How kind of you!" she said merrily. "I might return the compliment.
What a pretty place you have made of this!"

"I brought a few little things with me. I knew nothing was to be
bought here. And the things I found here already were good."

"It is a damp place down here under the trees. Now that you have made
it so pretty it would be hard to leave it. Else I should suggest
another cottage. There is a nice dry one on the upper road."

"Oh! I shouldn't think of leaving this," Mrs. Wade said, nervously.
Still her colour kept coming and going. America had not yellowed her
as it usually had the _revenants_. Her dark skin was smooth and richly
coloured: her eyes soft and still brilliant. Only the greying of her
hair told that she was well on towards middle age.

"But it is very lonely. You are not nervous?"

"I like the loneliness."

"You should have a dog."

Her tongue had nearly slipped into saying that a dog was the kind of
company that did not ask questions.

"I should have to exercise a dog."

A queer look of fear came into her eyes. Lady O'Gara could have
imagined that she looked stealthily from one side to another.

"But you must go out sometimes," she said.

Again the look of fear cowered away from her. What was it that Mrs.
Wade was afraid of?

"I was never one for walking," she said, lamely.

"You don't like to tear yourself from this pretty room?"

It was very pretty. The walls had been thickly whitewashed and the
curtains at the window were of a deep rose-colour. A few cushions in
the white chairs and sofa repeated the rose-colour. The room seemed to
glow within the shadow of the many trees, overhanging too heavily
outside.

"You have too many trees here," Lady O'Gara went on. "It must be
pitchy towards nightfall. I shall ask my husband to cut down some of
them."

She was wondering at her own way with this woman. Gentle and kindly as
she was, she had approached the visit with something of shrinking, the
unconscious, uncontrollable shrinking of the woman whose ways have
always been honourable and tenderly guarded, from the woman who h