"Are you quite certain about Stella's parentage, Mary? She is the child of that French soldier, St. Maur, was it? and the Irish governess?"
"Of course, Shawn."
It had never occurred to Lady O'Gara to doubt it.
She looked at her husband with wondering eyes. The lights in her brown eyes were as deep and quiet now as when she was in her young beauty. She had a sudden illumination. Was that the bee in Shawn's bonnet? There had been a certain silence about Stella's parentage. She thought she understood it. Mrs. Comerford had always been jealous of her loves. She did not wish it recalled that Stella, whom she adored, had not belonged to her by any tie of blood. Shawn must have got it into his head that the mystery might cover something disgraceful.
"You may be quite sure, Shawn," she said, her candid eyes fixed on him:
"There was nothing to conceal. Aunt Grace has told me everything."
His face cleared. "Then I confess," he said almost gaily, "that Stella is a young angel. Perhaps I was too hard on Terry."
The evenings began to draw in. Sir Shawn missed his boy. The hunting season was at hand. The opening meet was to be at Dunmara Cross-Roads in a fortnight's time. Lady O'Gara went out perhaps once a week. The other days Sir Shawn would miss Terry jogging along beside him, on the way to the meet in the morning, full of cheerful anticipation; riding homewards, tired and happy, in the dusk. Stella had never ridden to hounds. She had done little riding, indeed, since the days at the advanced Roman Convent when the girls went out on the Campagna in a flock, in charge of a discreet riding master, of unimpeachable age and plainness.
He was thinking as he rode home one evening, with the dusk closing in, that it would be pleasant to have Stella with him when Mary was not available. It was one tangible thing against Eileen that she did not like horses. Anthony Creagh's daughter! It seemed incredible to Sir Shawn, as it did to Patsy Kenny, that any one should not like horses.
There was a little mare not quite up to racing standard which he thought would just do for Stella. Indeed, though he did not know it, Patsy Kenny had put the idea into his head.
"That wan 'ud carry a lady in less than no time," Patsy had said, "A lady about the size of Miss Stella. She'd take the ditches like a bird."