"Terry has been playing fast and loose with Eileen."
"He would not like to hear you say so," Lady O'Gara said, with a proud and wounded air.
"There you go, Mary, getting your back up! Your one son can do no wrong. Do you deny that he was philandering after Eileen before Stella came, and that he has been philandering after Stella since?"
"Do you know, Shawn," Lady O'Gara said, with sudden energy, "that, fond as I am of Eileen, I think she has not the stuff in her to hold a boy like Terry. There is something lethargic in her. I'm afraid she is a little selfish. She can be very sweet when she likes, but I think at heart she is cold."
"This is a late discovery, Mary."
Lady O'Gara laughed, a little ruefully.
"I think it is a very old discovery," she said. "Anne said to me once—she never pretended that she loved Eileen as well as some of the others—that Eileen had a way of looking at her when she was in high spirits or something of the sort that was like a douche of cold water. I have had the lame experience myself. Eileen said something the other day about 'at your age.' I felt ninety, all of a sudden."
"Nonsense, Mary! Eileen adores you."
Lady O'Gara said no more. She let pass, with a shrug of her shoulders, her husband's accusation that she was fickle like Terry, putting away the old love for the new.
Suddenly Sir Shawn asked a direct question.