The door opened. In came Mrs. Comerford, tall, in her trailing blacks, magnificent, the long veil of her bonnet floating about her. She looked from one to the other of the group with amazement.
"I am surprised to find you here, Mary O'Gara," she said. "But perhaps you come to see my child. Where is Stella? I have brought the carriage to take her back to Inch."
"Oh, the poor child is too ill to be moved," said Lady O'Gara tremblingly.
"You should be by your husband's side," Mrs. Comerford said, as though
Mary O'Gara was still the child she had loved and oppressed.
She had not looked at Mrs. Wade since the first bitter contemptuous glance. Suddenly Mrs. Wade spoke with an air as though she swept the others aside. She faced Mrs. Comerford with eyes as steady as her own.
"Stella will not go with you, she said. She stays with me."
"You! her nurse. I did not know the child was so ill as to need a hospital nurse."
"Her mother, Mrs. Comerford. You did not satisfy her in all those years since you took her from my breast. I take her back again."