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