he girl and been prevented by his sudden death!
Something came into her mind, dreary and terrible. "The way to Hell is
paved with good intentions." Poor Terence, who had laid this coil for
their feet, tangling their lives and happiness in the meshes of his
passion, had he been paving Hell, just paving Hell, with good
intentions never to be realized?

Early as they had started she had found time to speak to her husband
about the possibility of there having been a marriage. He had found
her beside his bed full-dressed when he opened his eyes on the grey
morning.

"Shawn," she had said, "Could Terence have married Bridyeen Sweeney?"

The maze of sleep was still in his eyes. For a moment he stared at her
as though she had given him a new idea. Then he turned away fretfully.

"No," he said, "no. Put that out of your head. If it was so would he
have let me go on suffering as I did? It was the whiskey was at the
root of the trouble. He would never have spoken to me as he did if it
had not been for the whiskey."

She passed over the irrelevancy. Shawn was not yet all awake.

"Would he have righted her if he had lived, do you think, Shawn?"

"My God, Mary, how can I tell? Why do you torture me with such
senseless questions? You know how that old tragedy has power to upset
me.

"I'm sorry, Shawn," she said humbly. "It was for the boy's sake."

She left him, his face turned to the wall, her heart heavy because the
hope had failed. But a little later she had the house to herself, and
the hope came back again and asked the insistent question.

She was going to see Mrs. Wade for herself and discover if there was
hope for Terry and Stella. Common sense whispered at her ear, that it
was not likely Mrs. Wade would choose to be Mrs. Wade all those years
if she might have been Mrs. Terence Comerford, living at Inch, honoured
and with the love of her child. She would not listen to that chilling
whisper. She had known many strange things in life, quite contrary to
common sense. It would not be common sense now for Terry to want to
marry a girl born out of wedlock. It would not be common sense that
the girl should be kept in ignorance of the stain on her birth. But
these things happened.--A wryness came to Mary O'Gara's sweet mouth
with the thought that if Terry married Stella his children would be
born of a nameless mother. So the world was so strong in her!
Scornfully in her own mind she defied the world.