tainly, my dear child. Let me know what it will cost. I have a
piece of Carrickmacross lace somewhere which would make a fichu. You
must remind me, Eileen. We live so quietly here that I do not remember
how the fashions change."

"I've hardly noticed, either," said Eileen, with a hand on the door
handle. "The pink does very well for home-wear. But if Terry is going
to have friends, I should want something a little smarter."

Lady O'Gara smiled. So Eileen was interested in the coming of Major
Evelyn! And she had made so good a tea that any one less
ethereal-looking than Eileen might have been considered greedy! She
had left very little of the abundant tea to be removed.

"We'll have a turning-out one of these days," she said. "I noticed
your wardrobe was very full the other day when I was in your-room. We
can send off what you don't want to Inver, and I shall add a few
lengths of that Liberty silk. Brigid and Nora are so clever with that
little sewing machine I gave them last Christmas that they'll turn out
something very pretty for themselves."

"They've no occasion for pretty things," said Eileen. "There never was
any young man there but Robin Gillespie, the doctor's son. He is in
India in the R.A.M.C. Brigid liked him, I think, but he was not
thinking of Brigid."

Then she closed the door on her departing footsteps, leaving Lady
O'Gara to her thoughts.

She put the consideration of Eileen from her a little impatiently. She
was afraid Eileen was selfish. She did not seem to have any desire to
share her good things with her family, not even with her mother, yet
Mrs. Creagh was a very sweet mother; Mrs. Comerford who had a cynical
way sometimes had remarked one day when Eileen had been very caressing
with Lady O'Gara: "If your mother is like what I remember her you need
not go further for some one to love."

It was the day on which Lady O'Gara had given Eileen her necklet of
amethysts and seed-pearls--a beautiful antique thing, of no great
intrinsic value beyond its workmanship.

It suddenly came to her that, for a good while past, she had got into a
way of propitiating Eileen with gifts. It had not occurred to her
exactly as propitiation, but she had learnt that when Eileen was out of
sorts the gift of some pretty thing worked wonders. Had she been
spoiling the girl? Was she herself responsible for the whims and
fancies which Eileen took so often nowadays? In the old days it had
not been s