Her eyes asked an insistent question. Lady O'Gara was a truthful woman. The candour of her face did not belie her. She tried to avoid the eyes, lest they should drag the truth from her.
"She is only very old," she answered, haltingly. "Not mad, but perhaps..."
"The odd thing is,"--Stella put by what she had been about to say as a trivial thing,--"that I _wish_ what the old woman said was true. I _wish_ it with all my heart. She was like what I think a mother must be to me. I have always been running away to her, ever since you brought me first. She _comforted_ me. I have always felt there was something I did not know. Granny would never tell me about my father and mother. If she is not my mother why should I feel all that about her? She made up to me for everything. And Sir Shawn was cold. He used to like me, but now he does not. He is afraid,"--a little colour came to her cheek,--"that I will marry Terry. He need not be afraid. If Mrs. Wade is my mother I shall not marry Terry. He can marry Eileen Creagh and please his father! Do not tell me she is not my mother."
Was the mother, the nameless mother, worth all that to her child? It seemed so.
"Oh, the poor boy!" Lady O'Gara said, with sudden tears, clasping her hands together. "Is he to have no word in it?"
"Not if I am Mrs. Wade's daughter. She told me how she lived with her grandmother who kept a shop in the village long ago. Of course Sir Shawn would not like it. I see that quite well, and I am not thinking of marrying Terry or any one. I am only thinking that Mrs. Wade may be my mother. I've always wanted a mother. How I used to envy the Italian children when I was little. They had such soft warm, dark-eyed mothers. And I had only Granny--and Miss Searle. Miss Searle was fond of me but she was often cross with me. Granny never _loved_ me as a mother would have. I was sometimes afraid of her though she was good to me"--her cheeks were scarlet by this time,--"I am going to stay here and wait for Mrs. Wade to return. If _she_ does not come I must go to look for her. Terry need not trouble about me, nor Sir Shawn...."
"Oh, the poor boy!" said Lady O'Gara again, with the soft illogicality that her lovers loved in her. "But, Stella, love, you cannot stay here. Think how people would talk. Come home with me. You can wait just as well at Castle Talbot. Every day you shall come and see if she has returned. It would be better, of course, for you to go back to Inch..."