"Ah," he said, "if her mother's face could be the first thing for her eyes to rest upon when she comes out of that bad dream, it would do a good deal to restore her sanity."
"Unfortunately we do not know where the mother is," Lady O'Gara said sorrowfully.
"I will give the patient something to keep her quiet to-night," the doctor went on. "Perhaps you could send some one over to my house for the medicine."
"Patsy Kenny will go."
"Now let me take you back to the house. It is growing dusk. Is there any one you could send to stay with Mrs. … Mrs. …?"
"Susan Horridge. Oh, yes. I can send Margaret McKeon, my maid. She never talks."
The doctor gave no indication of any curiosity as to why no talking made Margaret McKeon a suitable person for this emergency. The world was full of odd things, even such a remote bit of it as lay about Killesky. The place buzzed with gossip. Every one in it knew already the story of the charge made by the drunken tramp against Sir Shawn O'Gara. It had reached Dr. Costello at an early stage in its progress. He remembered the death of Terence Comerford and the gossip of that time. In his own mind he was piecing the story together: but he was discretion itself. No one should be the wiser for him.
He was on his way home, having left Lady O'Gara safely at her own door, when he did something that very nearly ran the bicycle with the side-car into the bog. Patsy, his passenger, merely remarked calmly: "A horse 'ud have more sinse than this hijeous thing."
The doctor, piecing together the details of the old tragedy to explain the new, had had an illumination as blinding as the flash of lightning widen reveals a whole countryside for a moment before it falls again to impenetrable blackness.
"By Jove," he had said to himself, "Stella is Terry's daughter. And the woman at Waterfall Cottage—they will talk even though I don't encourage them—is Bridyeen Sweeney that was. I wonder some of them didn't chance on that."