"She will not like me," Stella complained with a flash of tears in her eyes, "if I was to give her my heart she would not like me."
"You should not have given her your seed-pearls," said Lady O'Gara.
"It is too valuable a gift to pass from one girl to another."
It was beginning to dawn on her that Eileen was greedy and selfish. Perhaps she had had intuitions of it when Eileen had disappointed her. Eileen was only friendly to Stella when she wanted something. Once she had obtained it she relapsed into her former coldness. Lady O'Gara realized that Eileen had always been greedy. She had laid Terry under heavy toll for small attentions and such gifts as he might give her. Eileen's incessant eating of chocolate had made Lady O'Gara wonder how she could give so good an account of herself at meal-times. She smoked—it was a new fashion of which Lady O'Gara did not altogether approve—a cigarette now and again and Terry supplied the gold-tipped, scented kind which Eileen took from a cigarette case of platinum with her name in turquoise at the corner. The cigarette case was a new possession. Lady O'Gara supposed that it came from Terry. She had not asked. A violet scent, so good that on its first introduction Lady O'Gara had cried out that some one was wearing wet violets, now always heralded Miss Creagh's coming into a room.
There were some things which had not come from Terry. When Lady O'Gara had noticed them Eileen had said carelessly that they were given her by Robin Gillespie, the son of the doctor at Inver, and a doctor himself in the Indian Army. Anthony Creagh and his wife had an overflowing quiverful. Lady O'Gara made excuses for the girl who must have had it in her blood to do without. Still, Robin Gillespie, the doctor's son at Inver, could not have much to spare, but apparently he had given Eileen a good many trinkets.
"When does Terry join his regiment?" Sir Shawn asked his wife one day with a certain sharpness.
"Not till September."
"And it is now August. A pity he should waste his time philandering."
"Does he philander?"
Lady O'Gara's voice had a hurt sound in it. She found nothing amiss in her one child.
"He philandered with Eileen till Stella came. Now apparently he inclines to Stella. He mustn't play fast and loose with girls."