"Let me deal with him, father," said Terry, looking like a young god in contrast with the unpleasant Mr. Baker.
"I know this man," Sir Shawn said, quietly. "He once rendered me a service."
"When I were gamekeeper over to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow 'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That Mr. Lascelles, 'e weren't safe."
Ashbridge! Oh—so the man had been employed at Ashbridge Hall, Lord Trentham's place, some thirty miles away on the edge of Lough Aske. How long ago? Patsy kept asking himself the question. He looked after Sir Shawn and Mr. Baker as they went away in the direction of the house. Sir Shawn had an official room with a door opening out on to the grounds, so that the many people who came to consult him on one business or another need not enter through the house.
"That fellow's face would hang him anywhere," said Terry O'Gara. "I wonder what amount of villainy lies between a gamekeeper's place at Ashbridge and the brute he is to-day?"
"God help them that are in his power," Patsy Kenny said fervently. Then he went to the gate and looked out. The pots and pans and cans had disappeared. Down the long straight road there was no one in sight. The woman and child had vanished.
Oddly enough he was disturbed by the noise Mustapha was still making in his box-stall.
"I shouldn't be surprised now if he was to be a foal of Spitfire," he said. "I did hear she was bought by a man somewhere about Lewy mountain. The little man we bought him from was a mountainy man, if he wasn't a fairy."
CHAPTER IV
FROM THE PAST
The morning after these happenings Lady O'Gara, turning over the pile of letters on the breakfast table, changed colour at the sight of one which bore an Italian postmark. It was addressed in a large firm handwriting in which only very keen observation could have discovered any sign of weakening. After that momentary glance she laid away the letter with the superscription turned downwards while she read the rest of her correspondence.
When she had finished breakfast she followed her husband into his office, as that special room was called. The windows had not been opened—they were French windows and they served as a door out on to the gravel sweep which ran around the house—and she thought she detected a faint disagreeable smell, as of drugs. She unbolted a window and flung it wide and the warm June air came flowing in, banishing the unpleasant sharp odour.
"You haven't been taking anything, Shawn?" she asked, looking at him a little anxiously. "I thought I smelt something peculiar. You are not looking well."
"I am very well, Mary," he answered. "Perhaps it was the person I had here yesterday evening. I believe I closed the window after he went out. He had been drinking. There was a horrible smell."
"I came to the door while you were talking to him and I heard you say,
'What do you mean by coming here?' Who was he, Shawn?"
Again Sir Shawn was suddenly pale. She was looking down at the letter she had extracted from the pile, and he turned his back to the window, so that when she looked at him again with her frank ingenuous gaze, his face was in shadow.
"He was a man who saved my life, or thinks he did, at a shooting-party at Ashbridge. There was a fellow there who had never handled a gun before. He would have put a whole charge of shot into me if this chap, Baker, hadn't knocked up his gun in time. I don't think it would have killed me, although it might have been rather unpleasant. Baker likes to think, for his own purposes,"—he spoke with a weary air—"that he saved my life. He may have saved my beauty. He considers himself my pensioner."
"Ah!" Lady O'Gara was satisfied with the explanation. "What a pity he should drink! Can we do nothing for him?"
"I'm afraid not. He would like to be my game-keeper, but that is out of the question. He had not much character when he left Ashbridge. He has had more than one job in England since then, and has lost them all. He has come down very much in the world even since I saw him last."
"A pity," said Lady O'Gara, "since he rendered you a service."
"I gave him some money and got rid of him: it was the only thing to do."
Once again Lady O'Gara's frank eyes turned upon her husband.
"I don't think you ever told me about that thing before," she said. "I should have remembered if you had told me."
"No," he said with an averted face. "It happened—the winter you were in Florence. I came home and was met by the news that you were away. The sun dropped out of my skies."
She blushed suddenly and brightly. Her husband had turned from his gloomy contemplation of the lawn outside, on which a tiny Kerry cow was feeding. He said to himself that she was more beautiful in her mature womanhood than the day he married her. She had been soft and flowing even in her girlhood, with a promise of matronly beauty. Now, with a greater amplitude, she was not less but more gracious. Her bronze hair which had the faintest dust upon it went back from her temples and ears in lovely waves which no art could have produced. It was live hair, full of lights and shadows. Her husband had said that it was like a brown Venetian glass with powdered gold inside its brownness. There were a few brown freckles on the milk-white neck. Her eyes were kind and faithful and set widely apart: her nose straight and short: and she had a delightful smile.
She came now and put her arms about his neck. They were in curious contrast, she so soft, fair and motherly: he slender and dark, with weary eyes and a look as though he had suffered.
"Shawn!" she said, "Shawn!" and there was a passionate tenderness in her voice, as she pressed his head against her heart.
Then she let her arms fall and turned away, looking as though some sadness had clouded her joy.
"Poor Terence!" she said.
There was the same thought between them, but they left it unspoken. She had chosen Shawn O'Gara in her own heart even while she was expected to marry Terence Comerford.
"Why do you talk of Terence now?" he asked.
"I have had a letter from Aunt Grace after all these years." She held the letter towards him.
"She has forgiven you?" he asked, making no movement to take the letter.
"She is coming back to Inch. She writes that Stella, her adopted daughter, is growing up. She has forgiven us. She is pleased that we named our son after poor Terence. You remember you were rather opposed to it, Shawn."
"I did not wish to be reminded of the loss of my friend at every moment," he said. "The tragedy was too new."
Still he showed no indication of taking the letter from her hand.
"Read it to me," he said, in his weary voice. "I wonder how Stella will like Inch after Italy. There is so much rain and cloud. One has to be born to it to like it."
"When I was in Italy I simply longed for a day of Irish rain," Mary O'Gara said: "it is good for us. We need it. We grow parched in the dry climates."
"It has held the secret of perpetual youth and beauty for you, Mary," her husband said, looking at her with loving admiration.
She laughed and blushed. She was not beyond blushing at a compliment even from her husband.
"We must make things as gay for the child as possible," she said. Then she added:
"I