talking, a little way along the
avenue where no listener could hear--"I've told Miss Stella a lie, and
I'm not sorry for it, although I'm a truthful woman. It was a big lie
too. I told her that there terror she had of runnin' and runnin' from
somethink dreadful was but the fever. I told her she dreamed it. But
I'd never have got it out of her head if her Ma hadn't come."

She turned away and was silent for a minute. Then she spoke again in a
low voice.

"It was the drink," she said. "The Lord forgive all the wicked!"

One of these days Lady O'Gara was saying to herself that she must read
and answer all the letters that had come to her while Sir Shawn still
claimed her constant attention. There was a heaped basket of them on
the desk in her own room. It was a very chilly afternoon. Sir Shawn
was asleep upstairs. Presently Reilly and Patsy Kenny would carry him
down on his wonderful couch. Terry was over at Inch. He was to bring
back Stella, and later on they were to be joined at dinner by Mrs.
Comerford and Mrs. Terence.

"I'm afraid no one ever wrote to tell poor Eileen," Lady O'Gara said to
herself, with a whimsical glance at the letter basket and the flanking
waste-paper basket. The telling that was in her mind referred to the
approaching marriage of Terry and Stella. Eileen had been notified of
Sir Shawn's illness and had written expressing her concern. But Eileen
never could write a letter. The formal and ill-constructed phrases
conveyed nothing. Somewhat to Lady O'Gara's surprise Eileen had not
offered to return. But after that formal letter another letter had
come, quite a thick one, and it lay still unopened amid the accumulated
letters.

"Poor Eileen! I wonder if there was anything in Terry's story about
the lakh of rupees!"

The thought had but entered her mind when she heard, or thought she
heard, the sound of approaching carriage-wheels. She listened. It
might be Dr. Costello, who had a way of coming on friendly visits very
often. Or perhaps Terry and Stella were coming earlier than she had
expected them.

The door opened. In came a young woman wearing magnificent furs,
bringing with her a scent of violets. Eileen!

She flung her arms about Lady O'Gara with an unaccustomed
demonstrativeness. But she turned a cold satin cheek to the lady's
kiss. It had been characteristic of Eileen even in small childhood
that in moments of apparently greatest abandonment she had never ki