dying and had a little money to
leave. I hope she didn't hasten the creature's death. I was with him
three months--I loved to work for him: he was such an old saint and so
grateful--when she came back and wanted to take up the place again.
She hadn't got the money, I believe, after all. But by that time I
knew more about her than the saintly old man did, and I threatened to
tell, and so got rid of her. I was very happy there at Drumlisk--there
was a light upon the house. Why wouldn't there be with a Saint in it?
and the least thing you did for him he was so grateful. I told him
about my marriage and the oath I'd taken. He absolved me from that
oath. He said it wasn't binding, and that I was in the wrong to let
people think me something I was not, much less the wrong to the child
deprived of her father as well as her mother."

"He was quite right there," Mrs. Comerford said. "I never had Stella's
heart. She wanted you if she could not have her father."

"I had too low an opinion of myself. I said to myself that Stella
would grow up a lady and I was a poor woman. I had done better for her
by not claiming her, no matter what sorrow it had meant to me. I had
my spies out all the time. Lizzie Brennan recognized me one day she
wandered into the church at Drumlisk when I was cleaning the sanctuary
lamp. It was no use denying it. She knew me. I made her promise
she'd never tell. The creature was grateful for the little I could do
for her. She told me Inch was empty all those years. Then, when
Father O'Connell died, and I was in grief for him, she came and told me
Mrs. Comerford had come back with the little lady. The longing grew on
me--I was very lonely and so I came to Waterfall Cottage, that I might
see the child I'd been longing for all my days."

"You should have walked into Inch and said out that you were my son's
lawful wife. I am not the woman to turn my back on his wife, even
though you were Judy Dowd's grandchild," Mrs. Comerford said fiercely.

"I never thought of doing that. I only wanted to get a glimpse of the
child now and again. Then you, Lady O'Gara, brought her to me, and the
love leapt up alive between us the minute we met. I gave myself up to
it for a while, feeling as though I was committing a sin all the time.
Then I was frightened by old Lizzie. She discovered somehow that
Stella was my daughter. She was getting less reliable, being so old.
I did not want to stand between St