Love of Brothers. Katharine Tynan

"Eileen seems to have him very securely in her chains."

      Lady O'Gara frowned ever so slightly. "I wish our children did not grow away from us so soon," she said. "Terry might have continued a little longer being in love only with his mother."

      Sir Shawn lifted his eyebrows in a manner which accentuated his foreign look.

      "Jealous, Mary?" he asked.

      "Not of Eileen. She allures him, but, I come first."

      "You would always have your place. You are of the women who are adored by their sons. You would not care for Eileen for a daughter-in-law, though she has been almost your adopted daughter these ten years back?"

      "She would not suit Terry."

      "She is very fond of you."

      "Yes, I think she is fond of me." Her voice was cold.

      "I hardly know you, Mary, in this mood towards Eileen. You are usually so sweetly reasonable."

      "It is the privilege of a woman to be unreasonable sometimes."

      The sunshine came back to her face, laughed in the depths of her eyes and brought a dimple to either cheek.

      "I suppose I am a little jealous of Terry," she said. "You see he is very like you, Shawn. And I am fond of Eileen, really. Only, I suppose all mothers are critical of the girls their sons fall in love with, especially if it is an only son. It is odd how it has come suddenly to Terry that Eileen is a pretty girl. Of course he has only seen her in her vacations. Sit down now, Shawn, and I will read you Aunt Grace's letter."

      He sat down obediently in the revolving chair in front of his desk and she came and stood by him. Her voice was a little disturbed as she read the letter.

      "MY DEAR MARY—You will be surprised to hear that I am coming back again to Inch. The years bring their dust, as some poet says: they certainly soften griefs and asperities. When I left Inch I was broken-hearted for my one boy. It was a poisoning of the grief at that time to know that you and Shawn O'Gara were going to be married. I felt that you had forgotten my beautiful boy, that his friend had forgotten him: but that I acknowledge now to have been a morbid and unreasonable way of looking at things. My boy never thought of any girl but you, yet I could not expect you to go unmarried for his sake: indeed I would not have wished it. You and Shawn must forgive that old unreasonable bitterness of mine, the bitterness of a mother distraught by grief.

      "I have left you alone all these years, but I have not been without knowledge of you. I know that your son is called Terence after my son. I appreciate that fact, which indicates to me that you keep him in loving remembrance.

      "After all these years I am suddenly weary for home, so weary that I wonder now how I could have kept away so long. Whether I shall end my days at Inch depends on Stella. My wild experiment of adopting this child, as some of my friends thought it at the time, has turned out very well. Stella is a dear child. I send you a photograph which hardly does her justice. As she is entirely mine she goes by my name, although her father was French. I should like to say to you that though I shall provide for Stella it will not be to your detriment. I have a sense of justice towards my kin.