"You needn't think I shan't feel it," she said. "You have been dear to me, sweet to me; and I shall always love you. And poor Granny——" A little shiver ran through her and for a second she closed her eyes. "I am sorry for her, too, poor woman! but it will be kinder to you all for me to go away. I did think that I was going to die and that would have made it so much easier for every one. Only, now that my mother has come back and needs me, I must go on living—but at a distance from this place. Terry will forget me and marry Eileen and be very happy."
The tired voice trailed off into silence. Evidently the long speech had been an effort.
"Terry is obstinately faithful," said Lady O'Gara, with a sound like a sob in her voice. "But now, I think you have talked enough. Go to sleep, child. We shall have plenty of time for talk, even if you do keep to your resolve to leave us all."
Stella opened her eyes again to say:
"No one is ever to say a word against my mother. She never did anything wrong, my poor little mother, even if she was deceived. I honour her more than any one in the world."
"Don't talk about it, child. No one will dare to say anything," Lady O'Gara assured her, eager to stop something which she felt too poignant, too intolerable to be said or heard.
Almost at once Stella was asleep. There came a little knock at the door. It was Susan to say that, please would Lady O'Gara come down to tea, while she sat with Miss Stella.
Again Lady O'Gara felt the strangeness of it all. There was Mrs. Wade pouring out the tea, handing cakes and toast, doing the honours like any assured woman in her drawing-room—except that she would not take tea herself and could not be prevailed upon to sit down with them.
Once or twice Lady O'Gara thought she intercepted a soft, motherly glance, with something of beaming approval in it, directed from Mrs. Wade's eyes upon Terry. There was light upon Terry's dark head from Mrs. Wade's eyes. The boy was shy, ill at ease. He was dying to ask questions, but he felt that the situation craved wary walking. He fidgeted and grew red: looked this way and that; was manifestly uncomfortable.
None of them had heard the hall-door open nor any one enter, but Keep, stretched on the hearthrug, growled. Shot lying under the table answered him. From Michael, in the kitchen, came a sharp hysterical barking. Michael was not so composed, not so entirely well-mannered as his brothers of the famous Shot breed.