The meeting had taken place. The great moment had come and gone: and there was Aunt Grace talking about Farrell's car as though all that lay between them had been but a dream.
Lady O'Gara's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Ah, you are tired," she said with soft tenderness, "you are tired!"
The change the years had wrought in the tall handsome woman who had been queenly to her young mind overwhelmed her. She forgot the dread she had had of the meeting, which had destroyed any happy anticipation. "Come and sit down," she said. "Let me help you off with your cloak. You will have breakfast? What a long journey for you!"
Mrs. Comerford allowed herself to be put into the softest of the easy chairs. A look of gratification, of pleasure, came to her face. She allowed Lady O'Gara to take off her hat and long travelling cloak, to unlace her shoes.
"You were always a kind creature," she said, "and it is nice to be home again. How beautiful the cloudy skies are! Many and many a time during those years I have wanted grey skies. I've been sick even for a whole wet day. Do you think, Mary, that if we Westerners get to Heaven we will want a wet day now and again?"
So the old resentment had gone. How strange it was after all the grief and estrangement to have Aunt Grace talking like this. It encouraged Lady O'Gara, sitting on the floor at Mrs. Comerford's feet, to pat the foot from which she had drawn off the shoe, with a tender furtive caress.
"You'd better get up, Mary. I hear Clinch coming. You have hardly changed from the girl of twenty-five years ago. Of course you are plumper, more matronly. You have a boy of twenty-one."
Clinch came in with the bag, followed by Mrs. Clinch with a tea-tray, smiling broadly.
"The young lady said she'd have a bath before her breakfast, ma'am," she said, and there was a radiance about her old face which had not been there for many a day.