de any difference? I would have said like
an ancestor of mine:

"Has the pearl less whiteness
Because of its birth?
Has the violet less brightness
For growing near earth?

That is what any lover worth his salt would say: yet when one is older
and very proud of one's family the bar sinister is not a thing to be
thought of."

"You said yourself that Bridyeen was an innocent creature. You forgave
Terence, who was her tempter. You love his memory and you have called
your one son after him. Is it fair, is it just?"

She was frightened at her own temerity. The subject of Terence
Comerford had always been like an open wound to her husband.

"Did I forgive Terence?" he asked with a wonder that had something
child-like about it; "I was very angry with Terence, dreadfully angry.
Do you remember that passage, Mary?

"Alas they had been friends in youth;

you know how it goes on:

"And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."

She had slipped an arm about his neck, and her hand went on softly
caressing his cheek.

"I think we shall have to tell Terry," she said, "if we persist in our
refusal. We could not take up such an untenable position.
Unless..."--she hesitated.

"Go on, Mary," he said.

"Unless we were to accept Grace's story of Stella's birth. Why should
it not be true?" She asked the question piteously. "Are you sure,
Shawn, about the other thing?"

But while she said it she remembered Stella's likeness to Mrs. Wade.
Why, any one might see it, any one. A new fear sprang up in her heart,
troubled by many fears. This time it was for Stella. Any day, any
hour, some one besides herself might discover that likeness. Why, for
all she knew the place buzzed with it already. Sooner or later some
one would recognize Mrs. Wade as Bridyeen Sweeney. Then it would be
easy to piece the old story together. Already people had noticed that
Stella had the Comerford colour, which had been, in her own case, the
Creagh colour. Grace Comerford ought not to have come back. Shawn was
quite right. She ought not to have come back.

"You are a very clever woman, Mary. But it seems to me a cheap novel
kind of suggestion. I think we must face the thing as it is. I shall
tell Terry to-night."

Terry was told. He came to his mother's room after hearing the story.
She had been expecting him. In the end her men always brought her
their troubles. So she had piled up