"Would you have Mrs. Horridge to stay with you?" she asked. "You know you cannot stay here quite alone. She is a gentle creature, and very unobtrusive. I shall feel happy about you if she is here."
To her immense relief Stella consented readily.
"She has been very good to my mother," she said; "and they are both victims of men's cruelty."
Lady O'Gara, who was looking at Stella at the moment, noticed that her eyes fell on something outside the window and a quick shudder passed through the slight body. She went to Stella's side and saw only a heap of stones for road-mending. They must have been newly flung down there, for she did not remember to have seen them when last she passed this way.
Was it possible that Stella knew? That her eyes saw another heap of stones, and upon them a dead man lying, his blood turning the sharp stones red?
CHAPTER XX
SIR SHAWN HAS A VISITOR
The sun was low, almost out of sight, as Lady O'Gara climbed up the hill from Waterfall Cottage to her own South lodge. Through the bars of the gate she caught a glimpse of a red ball going low, criss-crossed with the bare branches of the trees. The air nipped. There was going to be frost. Before she left she had seen the lamps lit at Waterfall Cottage and bidden Stella lock herself in and only open to a voice she knew.
She had delayed, washing up the tea-cups with Stella, trying to distract the girl from her grief to the natural simple things of life: and all the time she had felt that Stella longed for her to be gone.
She had narrowly escaped being caught in the dusk—without the flashlight Terry had given her, which she usually carried when she went out these short afternoons. Was she growing as stupid as the villagers? She had glanced nervously at the heap of stones as she passed them by where the water made a loud roaring noise hurrying over the weir. She had to remind herself that it was not really dark but only dusk, and that she had never been afraid of the dark. Rather she had loved the kind night, the mantle with which God covers His restless earth that she may sleep. As she went up the hill she thought uneasily of the tramp who had passed the window of Waterfall Cottage a few hours earlier. The shambling figure had a menace for her. She could not keep from glancing over her shoulder and was glad to come to her own gate.