am very well, Mary," he answered. "Perhaps it was the person I had here yesterday evening. I believe I closed the window after he went out. He had been drinking. There was a horrible smell."
"I came to the door while you were talking to him and I heard you say,
'What do you mean by coming here?' Who was he, Shawn?"
Again Sir Shawn was suddenly pale. She was looking down at the letter she had extracted from the pile, and he turned his back to the window, so that when she looked at him again with her frank ingenuous gaze, his face was in shadow.
"He was a man who saved my life, or thinks he did, at a shooting-party at Ashbridge. There was a fellow there who had never handled a gun before. He would have put a whole charge of shot into me if this chap, Baker, hadn't knocked up his gun in time. I don't think it would have killed me, although it might have been rather unpleasant. Baker likes to think, for his own purposes,"—he spoke with a weary air—"that he saved my life. He may have saved my beauty. He considers himself my pensioner."
"Ah!" Lady O'Gara was satisfied with the explanation. "What a pity he should drink! Can we do nothing for him?"
"I'm afraid not. He would like to be my game-keeper, but that is out of the question. He had not much character when he left Ashbridge. He has had more than one job in England since then, and has lost them all. He has come down very much in the world even since I saw him last."
"A pity," said Lady O'Gara, "since he rendered you a service."
"I gave him some money and got rid of him: it was the only thing to do."
Once again Lady O'Gara's frank eyes turned upon her husband.
"I don't think you ever told me about that thing before," she said. "I should have remembered if you had told me."
"No," he said with an averted face. "It happened—the winter you were in Florence. I came home and was met by the news that you were away. The sun dropped out of my skies."
She blushed suddenly and brightly. Her husband had turned from his gloomy contemplation of the lawn outside, on which a tiny Kerry cow was feeding. He said to himself that she was more beautiful in her mature womanhood than the day he married her. She had been soft and flowing even in her girlhood, with a promise of matronly beauty. Now, with a greater amplitude, she was not less but more gracious. Her bronze hair which had the faintest dust upon it went back from her temples and ears in lovely waves which no art could have produced. It was live hair, full of lights and shadows. Her husband had said that it was like a brown Venetian glass with powdered gold inside its brownness. There were a few brown freckles on the milk-white neck. Her eyes were kind and faithful and set widely apart: her nose straight and short: and she had a delightful smile.
She came now and put her arms about his neck. They were in curious contrast, she so soft, fair and motherly: he slender and dark, with weary eyes and a look as though he had suffered.
"Shawn!" she said, "Shawn!" and there was a passionate tenderness in her voice, as she pressed his head against her heart.
Then she let her arms fall and turned away, looking as though some sadness had clouded her joy.
"Poor Terence!" she said.
There was the same thought between them, but they left it unspoken. She had chosen Shawn O'Gara in her own heart even while she was expected to marry Terence Comerford.
"Why do you talk of Terence now?" he asked.
"I have had a letter from Aunt Grace after all these years." She held the letter towards him.
"She has forgiven you?" he asked, making no movement to take the letter.
"She is coming back to Inch. She writes that Stella, her adopted daughter, is growing up. She has forgiven us. She is pleased that we named our son after poor Terence. You remember you were rather opposed to it, Shawn."
"I did not wish to be reminded of the loss of my friend at every moment," he said. "The tragedy was too new."
Still he showed no indication of taking the letter from her hand.
"Read it to me," he said, in his weary voice. "I wonder how Stella will like Inch after Italy. There is so much rain and cloud. One has to be born to it to like it."
"When I was in Italy I simply longed for a day of Irish rain," Mary O'Gara said: "it is good for us. We need it. We grow parched in the dry climates."
"It has held the secret of perpetual youth and beauty for you, Mary," her husband said, looking at her with loving admiration.
She laughed and blushed. She was not beyond blushing at a compliment even from her husband.
"We must make things as gay for the child as possible," she said. Then she added:
"I wonder if Aunt Grace realizes that Terry is now a young man. He seems épris with Eileen, so I suppose he will not fall in love with Stella?"
Sir Shawn looked startled.
"I hope not," he said. "Eileen seems to have him very securely in her chains."
Lady O'Gara frowned ever so slightly. "I wish our children did not grow away from us so soon," she said. "Terry might have continued a little longer being in love only with his mother."
Sir Shawn lifted his eyebrows in a manner which accentuated his foreign look.
"Jealous, Mary?" he asked.
"Not of Eileen. She allures him, but, I come first."
"You would always have your place. You are of the women who are adored by their sons. You would not care for Eileen for a daughter-in-law, though she has been almost your adopted daughter these ten years back?"
"She would not suit Terry."
"She is very fond of you."
"Yes, I think she is fond of me." Her voice was cold.
"I hardly know you, Mary, in this mood towards Eileen. You are usually so sweetly reasonable."
"It is the privilege of a woman to be unreasonable sometimes."
The sunshine came back to her face, laughed in the depths of her eyes and brought a dimple to either cheek.
"I suppose I am a little jealous of Terry," she said. "You see he is very like you, Shawn. And I am fond of Eileen, really. Only, I suppose all mothers are critical of the girls their sons fall in love with, especially if it is an only son. It is odd how it has come suddenly to Terry that Eileen is a pretty girl. Of course he has only seen her in her vacations. Sit down now, Shawn, and I will read you Aunt Grace's letter."
He sat down obediently in the revolving chair in front of his desk and she came and stood by him. Her voice was a little disturbed as she read the letter.
"MY DEAR MARY—You will be surprised to hear that I am coming back again to Inch. The years bring their dust, as some poet says: they certainly soften griefs and asperities. When I left Inch I was broken-hearted for my one boy. It was a poisoning of the grief at that time to know that you and Shawn
