Kildares of Storm

It seemed to Kate presently, as she ran, that the wind was a friend, trying to help her. The driving rain on her face cleared her brain. Even the lightning was a friend, for without it she could not have seen a foot of her way ahead in the blackness.

Each time it flashed she stared about her, hoping to catch sight of Jacqueline. Suddenly she lifted up her voice and prayed aloud: "God, if You are up there, if there really is a You, now's Your chance to prove it! You hear me, God?" It was more a challenge than a prayer.

She knew that the girl had perhaps twenty minutes' start of her, but she might yet overtake her, and in this storm Channing might well be late. She slipped as she started down the ravine, and fell and rolled half way, bruising herself on tree roots and boulders, the wet grass soaking her to the skin.—No matter, it lost her no time. She fought her way through dripping, clinging underbrush to the ruins of the slave-house. The lightning showed it empty.—Could she have passed Jacqueline somehow in the darkness? She dared not wait to see, but ran on into the lane beyond. Nobody was in sight.

"I am too late!" she moaned, wringing her hands. "What shall I do now?"

She was convinced that Channing had already come for Jacqueline. She started running down the road, as if she might overtake the automobile on foot.

If she had waited at the cabin for a second lightning flash, she could not have failed to notice the traveling-bag left by Mag beside the door. Jacqueline, slipping into one of the stables to escape the first brunt of the storm, had lingered a moment to say good-by to her friends the horses; and it was at that moment that her mother passed. Kate had reached the Ruin first.

But she did not know it. When at the turn of the road she saw the glare of a headlight, she thought, "He's got her!" She was nearly exhausted by this time, too dazed to realize that the machine was approaching, not leaving, Storm. She gripped her rawhide whip and stepped directly into the path of the automobile.

It swerved violently, and came to a stand not a foot from her.

"Good God, Jacqueline! I almost ran you down," cried Channing. "Quick, jump in. You must be soaked to the bone, you plucky little darling!"

Quick as thought, Kate pulled open the door of the tonneau and slipped in behind. His mistake had stimulated her failing wits. Let him think her Jacqueline as long as possible! She choked back a laugh of rising excitement.

"You're wise—it's drier there than in front. Gad, what a storm! I was almost afraid it would scare you off. But I might have known better!"

Kate, listening acutely, detected a rather odd expression about the last words, and wondered suddenly whether Jacqueline's nonappearance might not have been something of a relief to Mr. Channing. Her eyes glittered, and she drew the shrouding hood closer about her face.

He had started the engine, and was turning the machine around. So far he had given her no opportunity to speak, and had to shout himself to be heard above the noise of the engine and the storm.

"We're going to have a run for it. I've arranged to have the 12:45 stop a second to take us on, and I'm late—This damned wind!"

The powerful car leaped forward. On two wheels it made the turn of the road, full into the teeth of the storm. Channing bent over his wheel. "Plenty of time to talk afterwards. Hold on tight!" His voice blew back to her, faint in the roar of the blast.

Kate settled back for the wild ride with a smile on her face, just such a grim, gay little smile as her daughter had worn when she led her cavalry charge against the Night Riders. She was secure from discovery for a few precious moments; while back there at the mouth of the ravine the real Jacqueline waited, bag in hand, anxious, crying a little perhaps, watching for a lover who would not appear.—Let her cry! She was safe there, safe with the friendly storm, the wind, the rain, and the lightning that do nothing worse than kill.

Far away across the wide plateau before them sounded the shrill whistle of a train. It shot into sight, a long, slim, glittering thing, flying a pennant of fiery smoke. Kate laughed exultingly. She never heard these trains shrieking their way through the darkness without a shuddering memory of her night of vigil in Frankfort, listening for the one which was to carry away her child, and which had taken instead the man she loved better than any child. She was a little beyond herself now, a little exaltée, as the French say, with the excitement of the moment; and it seemed to her that the approaching train was an old enemy upon whom she was about to be avenged by robbing it of its prey.

"Hurry, hurry!" she cried, leaning forward, forgetting in her excitement that she must not speak.

Charming laughed back over his shoulder. "You joy-rider! We're doing the best we can now—but we'll make it."

They drew up at the platform just as the train paused, a grinning porter waiting on the step with his box.

"Got your bag? Run for it," cried Channing, and followed through the pelting rain with his own luggage.

The train started even as the chuckling porter helped her on.

"Stateroom fo' N'Yawk,—yessir, yessir! Right in dis way, miss. I done seed you-all comin'. You suttinly did tek yo' foot in yo' han' an' trabbel—yessir! yes, suh!"

"Lord, what a run!" Channing was saying behind her. "I left the engine going, too—old Morty will be furious when he finds her! You must be wet as an otter in spite of that great cape.—Well, little sweetheart, here we are! Let 's—"

He stopped short. Kate had turned, slipping the cape from her shoulders.—There they were, indeed. The train sped on, gathering speed with each mile.

She began to laugh, softly at first, then more and more heartily, till her whole body shook and the tears streamed down her face. The romance-loving porter, listening outside, chuckled in sympathy. Channing essayed a sickly smile.

She stopped as suddenly as she had begun, and a silence fell.

Channing broke it, of course. It was his misfortune in moments of emergency always to become chatty.

"You have taken me by surprise, really!—I—I didn't recognize you at first. That cape—Look here, this isn't entirely my fault. You must know that! I meant to keep my word, I tried to. But Jacqueline would insist upon seeing me to—to prove that she trusted me. I told her it wouldn't do. She said she had made no promise.—Oh, hang it all, how could I help myself, with the girl throwing herself at my head like that? I'm no anchorite."

"No?" murmured Kate.

"No, certainly not! That is.—Look here, it's not what you think at all! I've been meeting her at night—it was the only way we could manage. But I am a gentleman, you know."

"Yes?" murmured Kate.

He tried again, perspiring freely. "This looks bad, I know, but I assure you—Jacqueline understands that I mean to marry her as soon as things are definitely settled. She understands me absolutely, the only woman, perhaps, who ever has. She has temperament herself. Why, that's the reason I consented to take her away," he continued eagerly, gaining confidence from the other's silence. "She really ought to have her training for opera. You don't realize what a voice it is, Mrs. Kildare! I could offer her certain opportunities, lessons abroad, introductions, a career, in fact—"

"And meanwhile you were going to act as her protector?" broke in Kate.

"Why—why, yes. Exactly!"

The faintest smile just lifted her lip. "From yourself?" she murmured.

Channing's eyes dropped. He would have given years of his life to meet without flinching that little smile. "I repeat, I would have married Jacqueline as soon as it was possible." He spoke with an effort for quiet dignity that was not convincing, even to himself; perhaps because he noticed just then, for the first time, the dog-whip which Mrs. Kildare was twisting and untwisting in her strong fingers.

"I suppose that dream is over now," he added sadly—a little hastily.

"I think we may safely say," she admitted, "that that dream is over."

He could not lift his eyes from those slender, muscular fingers. Across his too-vivid imagination had flashed Farwell's picture of the Madam going to the rescue of her fighting negroes. A little shudder went down his back. He wondered what he should do if she suddenly attacked him. Could he lay his hands upon a woman? Should he call for help? Must he simply stand there and let her—whip him?...

At that moment a whistle sounded, and the train began to slow down for a station. To his almost sick relief, Mrs. Kildare drew her cape about her shoulders. "I get off here," she said.

He rushed into speech. "Will you please tell Jacqueline how miserably sorry I am—how I regret—"

She cut him short. "I will tell Jacqueline nothing, and neither will you. All this"—she waved an inclusive hand about the stateroom—"it never happened."

"What! You mean—she is to believe I did not come for her?"

"Exactly. You have disappeared. And without any explanations to anybody."

"But, Mrs. Kildare! Good Lord! What will she think of me?"

"That you have simply broken your word again; which," said Kate, "is what I intend her to think. She shall not be further humiliated by the knowledge that there has been—an audience."

He began to understand. Kate knew her daughter. Pride was to be called to the rescue, and he himself would play a very sorry part hereafter in the memory of Jacqueline.

"But, Mrs. Kildare!" his vanity protested. "Really, I can't—"

His eyes dropped again, as if magnetized, to that twisting whip.

The author was not of the material out of which he created his heroes. He had a dread, an acute physical dislike, of what is called "a scene."—Very well! (he thought); if it helped poor, dear little Jacqueline to remember him as a cowardly wretch, as the sort of ungentlemanly villain of the piece who made engagements to elope with young women and then broke them—very well, let her so remember him.

Also, the thought occurred to him that if no explanations were to be made to any one, Philip Benoix would perhaps never hear of the thing he had tried and failed to do this night. For some odd reason, not entirely connected with the pistol he had seen in the clergyman's pocket, Channing wanted to be remembered as pleasantly as possible by Philip Benoix.

He sighed. "I see! You mean that Jacqueline shall learn to hate me.—As you wish, of course. I will make no explanations. I give you my word of honor never to write to her, or—"

"Your word of honor!" For one moment he met the full blast of the scorn in Kate's eyes, before his own fell again. "Never mind promises, sir. It will be to your advantage, Mr. Channing, to keep out of my way. Hereafter I take care of my own!"

For the first time her gaze followed his to the whip in her hands, and once more she burst out laughing; clear, ringing laughter that wakened half the car.

"Just a dog-whip," she explained from the door, reassuringly. Her voice was never sweeter. "I find after all that I shall not need it, you poor little prowling tomcat!—Good-by."

A rather watery sun was just showing over the tree-tops when Mrs. Kildare dismissed at her door the automobile she had commandeered, hoping to slip into the house unnoticed. But the dogs betrayed her. They were lingering hopefully about the kitchen door, with an eye on Big Liza, already up and about, for the Madam permitted no shiftless habits at Storm; and the sound of wheels brought them barking to the front of the house. Big Liza's curiosity was aroused, and she followed.

"My Lawdy, Miss Kate! whar you bin at?" she demanded, round-eyed. "You look lak a ghos', you sholy does!"

The Madam put her finger on her lip. "Business—I don't want it mentioned, Liza. You understand?"

The cook nodded importantly, pursing up her mouth. There is no safer confidante, as a rule, than a negro servant. The race is very amenable to the flattery of being trusted, and not too inquisitive about the doings of a superior order of beings. Kate had no fears with regard to Liza. It was Mag who bothered her.

The girl, who had not slept that night, met her at the foot of the stairs, looking terrified. "Oh, Miss Kate, whatever happened? Miss Jacky done come back an hour ago, and she's up in her room cryin' fit to break her heart. You—ain't killed him?" she whispered. It did not seem an unlikely question to ask of that white, set face with its burning eyes.

Kate drew her into the office and shut the door. "What have you told her?" she demanded.

"Who, Miss Jacky? I ain't told her nothin'. I didn't git a chance."

"Thank God!" murmured the mother.

All the way home her head had been spinning like a top with plans for keeping Jacqueline from knowing of her interference.

"She came in all wet and lookin' so queer!—No'm, she wa'n't cryin' then, but she looked kind o' pinched and old-like. She didn't say nothin' to me, except ask for the letter she done left for you, and when I give it to her, she thanked me that pretty way she has, for bein' so good to her.—Me, good to her! when I'd gone and told, and everything!" Mag began to blubber.

"Telling," muttered Kate, "was the one good thing you did for her.—What then?"

"Why, she went in her room an' locked the door, and when I axed through the keyhole didn't she want somethin' hot to drink, 'cause she was so wet, she said no, just let her alone, and please not to wake her up for breakfas' 'cause she might have a headache."

Kate's face softened. "Poor child! If it's nothing worse than a headache!—Now, then, my girl, I want to tell you what your 'goodness' might have done for Jacqueline." Her voice became harder and sterner than Mag had ever heard it. "Should you like to see her such a creature as you were before I brought you here, hunted, looked down upon, ashamed to face people—the kind of woman that the Night Riders try to drive out of decent communities?"

The girl cowered away from her. "Miss Jacky like me? Oh, she couldn't be, not ever! She's a lady," she cried piteously. "Her fella would have married her—you'd 'a' made him!"

"He could not, as it happens. He would have turned her, perhaps, into just such an outcast as you were, and you helping him! This is the return you have made me for my charity, Mag Henderson!"

The girl crouched with her face hidden, as if she expected a beating. "I didn't know, I didn't know!" she moaned. "I just wanted her to be happy with her fella—What you goin' to do with me, Miss Kate?"

"God knows," said the other bitterly.

Mag caught at her skirts, lifting her face in abject pleading. "Whatever you does to me, don't send little Kitty away! Don't git a mad on the baby! Say you won't, Miss Kate, say you won't!"

"Nonsense!" Kate spoke more gently. "Nobody's going to 'do' anything to you, or to the baby, either. I suppose you cannot help your ignorance. That's our job.—But it is evident that you can't be trusted."

"Yes'm, I kin!" sobbed the girl, childishly. "Yes'm, I kin, too! Just you try me."

"Very well, I'll try you." Kate made a quick decision. "Listen to me, Mag! It was I who met Mr. Channing and—persuaded him to go away. But Jacqueline does not know this, and she must never know it. I will not have my girl shamed before her mother. She must think he went off of his own accord, because he was afraid to take her.—Do you understand?"

Mag nodded, sniffling.

"You are to say nothing of what has happened to-night, either to Jacqueline or to any one else. You have been sound asleep all night! Do you hear?"

"But supposin'," said Mag fearfully, "supposin' Miss Jacky axes me questions?"

"Then you must lie. You know how to do that, I suppose!" said Kate, with some impatience.

As it happened, that was one thing Mag Henderson did not know how to do, certainly not with the clear, candid eyes of Jacqueline upon her. But an alternative occurred to her, and she made her promise.

"I won't never tell, I won't never tell nobody, Miss Kate, cross my heart and hope to die!"

"Very well, then." Mrs. Kildare was rather touched by the girl's contrition, her eagerness to be trusted. She held out a forgiving hand. "Shake hands on it, and remember this is for Jacky's sake."

Mag, with a gulp, put her hand into the Madam's, and forgot for the moment that she had been a creature hunted, looked down upon, ashamed to face decent people. Whatever harm she had done, she intended to atone for, even with sacrifice.

Kate patted her on the shoulder. "Now then, run and bring a pot of black coffee to my room, and see that I am not disturbed for at least two hours."

When she emerged at the end of that time, a little hollow-eyed and stiff, but ready for the day's routine, she found upon inquiry that Jacqueline had kept to her room with the prophesied headache and did not wish to be disturbed; also, that Mag had gone down to the village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she must not show.

All day long, as she rode upon her rounds, inspecting the damage wrought by last night's storm, she was rehearsing inwardly her first meeting with Jacqueline; planning to show her, without exciting suspicion, the depth of her love and her understanding. If only practical, unemotional Jemima were there, to act as buffer between them! She thought of consulting Philip, but decided that Jacqueline's secret was not hers to share.

One friend, however, she did consult, having so recently tested Him and found Him not wanting. Philip, happening into his always-open church early in the afternoon, was astounded to discover no less a person there than the Madam, on her knees, intent upon rendering unto God the things that are God's, as honestly as she rendered unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's.

He withdrew unnoticed; and thereafter, to his great delight, Kate Kildare was a regular frequenter of the church she had built, sitting with a rather bored expression through the service from first to last, while her horse and her dogs waited patiently at the door for their Sabbath exercise....

Kate shared the midday meal that day with workmen who were repairing damages to a favorite bit of beech-wood—frequently her custom when work was on hand that required her special attention. So it was not until dark that she rode wearily back to Storm, to discover her household seething with excitement.

Mag Henderson had never returned from her errand into the village. She had been gone since breakfast. A servant had just discovered, in Kate's room, a sealed letter addressed to the Madam, and pinned to her pillow.—Poor Mag had followed as closely as possible the example set by her beloved Miss Jacky.

Kate's face was very sad and discouraged as she read the little note:

Kate looked about her at the circle of black faces, all rather pleased and eager-looking over Mag's downfall, for the "poor white" is never popular with the better class of negroes, and Mag's position in the household had aroused some jealousy.

"I suppose it's too late to catch her," she said dully. "There have been a dozen trains to the city—we don't even know what city.—Oh, I've done this, I've done this!" She was speaking to herself, though she spoke aloud.

Big Liza took it upon herself to administer consolation. "No you ain't, honey, no, you ain't! She was jes' nachelly bo'n dat-a-way. In co'se it's natchel enough fo' a body to take up with a gemman friend, but to leave her own baby-chile behine her—why, dat gal's aimin' fer hell-fire jus' as fas' as she kin trabbel!"

Kate was reminded of poor Mag's parting gift, her "little hands and feet." She asked, sighing:

"Where is the baby?"

"Miss Jack's got her in her room."

She entered unheard, and found Jacqueline holding the little whimpering creature tight against her breast, rocking and crooning to it.

"There, there, precious! Did it miss its mama? Never mind, I know. They're tired of us, they've left us—I know. They just didn't want us any more. Never mind, pet! You've got me."

Kate slipped away again with dim eyes, leaving Jacqueline and the deserted baby to comfort each other.

Jacqueline had waited all that day for news from Channing, disappointed, more than a little humiliated, to think that he had failed where she had not, but making every allowance for him as a city-bred man not accustomed to storms such as that of the night before. Perhaps he had taken for granted that she would not venture out in it herself.

Then, as no word came from him, either by note or by telephone, she began to worry. The lightning had been very bad. After all, storms can be dangerous. Possibly he had met with an accident.

At last she could restrain herself no longer, and telephoned to Holiday Hill.

A noncommittal man-servant informed her that Mr. Farwell was still away (he had gone to Cincinnati on business for several days), and that the other gentleman had left unexpectedly the night before. He did not add that the household was all agog with the extreme unexpectedness of his leaving.

Jacqueline asked, rather tremulously, whether he would be returning soon. The servant thought not, as he had since telegraphed for all his luggage to be sent on to New York.

It was then that she began to realize what had happened to her. She still made excuses for him to herself. He had been thinking of her—he had decided that he could not accept her sacrifice. Perhaps he had been thinking a little of her mother, too, left alone there at Storm. Yes, she was sure he had been thinking a little of her mother, whom he so greatly admired, not understanding how eager Mrs. Kildare was for her children's happiness.—He would write, of course, and explain....

She dared not think of the blank and dreary future, but lived from hour to hour, watching for the mails. When the postman stopped on his daily round at the foot of Storm Hill, she was always waiting for him. Sometimes she met him down the road, in her eagerness. But there was never a letter for her, except now and then a line from the traveling Mrs. Thorpe.

Kate saw this eager watchfulness, and her heart smote her, and her secret lay heavy on her breast. But she made no comment, even when she noticed that the girl was neglecting her food in a manner unprecedented, and heard her prowling about the house at night, when she should have been asleep, like an unhappy little ghost.

"I must give her time, poor girlie," she thought, and wished that she might consult Philip.

Philip, however, was doing some observing on his own account. He had come across a phrase in a book recently that recurred to him whenever he saw Jacqueline nowadays: "God gives us our eyes, our parents gives us our noses, but we make our own mouths."

It occurred to him that Jacqueline was "making her mouth" far too rapidly. Of a sudden the lips had lost all their childish softness and were settling into a firm, curved line of great beauty, but which had more than a hint of pathos. "She has no right to such a mouth at her age!" he thought.

The fact of Channing's final disappearance was known to him, though not the manner of it; and at first it had filled him with satisfaction. Now, however, he realized that to get Channing out of sight was by no means to get him out of mind. His thoughts went back over the constant and secret companionship of many weeks, reaching as a climax the night the two had lost themselves in the mountains. He was uneasy—far more uneasy than Kate, who had in view a consolation for Jacqueline which Philip did not as yet suspect.

One day he happened in at Storm, to find Farwell making one of his frequent visits there. Jacqueline was chatting and laughing with him with her usual gaiety, but Philip, even as he entered, sensed a certain air of distress about the girl. It was Farwell's first call since Channing's disappearance.

"Hello, dominie," the actor greeted him cheerfully, evidently relieved by his arrival. "We've just been discussing the mysterious Percival. You knew, of course, that he'd gone without so much as a by-your-leave to me? Not that only, but took my favorite car and left it running in the mud, simply shaking itself to pieces. A queer devil!—I had gone to Cincinnati for a day or two, and when I got back, not a sign of my guest, neither hair nor hide of him!"

"Rude enough," commented Benoix.

"Oh, rude! Channing and I are old pals, and dropped our manners long ago. But unfriendly, that's what I call it! Leaving me in the lurch in that gloomy young barn of mine, without giving me a chance to get somebody in his place.—I tell you, this thing of being a country gentleman's the loneliest job I ever tackled! Do come and give me a cheering word now and then, Benoix.—And the only explanation the rotter made," he continued resentfully, "was a mere line saying he had been called to New York on urgent business. Urgent tommyrot! The only business he knows by sight is his own pleasure."

"His writing?" commented Jacqueline, quietly. "That isn't just pleasure."

"Oh, yes, it is, or you may be sure he wouldn't be doing it! I know Channing. He's selfish to the bone. Oh, I'm done with the chap!—The fact is," he added, very careful not to look at Jacqueline, "these geniuses aren't to be relied upon, either as friends or anything else, you see. They're just—geniuses."

"That's quite enough to be expected of them, isn't it?" remarked the girl, with a steady little smile.

Farwell changed the subject, having said what he had come to say; but inwardly he thought, "She's a brick! She's a loyal, plucky little brick, and Channing is a—skunk! Perhaps she chucked him, though," he reminded himself hopefully. "Serve him good and plenty if she did."

Thereafter the master of Holiday Hill spent as much time as he possibly could at Storm, Kate looking on at Jacqueline's friendly flirtation with him with something between a smile and a sigh.

The girl was doing a good deal in the way of flirtation just then, not only with Farwell, but with several of the earlier "victims" who continued to come out from Lexington occasionally, and were encouraged to come more often. Kate had been through just such a stage of unhappiness herself, the reckless, desperate, defiant stage, when trouble is to be kept at bay only by sheer bravado. And she had been watched safely through it by the understanding eyes of Jacques Benoix, even as Jacqueline would be watched through it by the understanding eyes of his son.

For it was only with Philip the girl dared to be quite herself just then, distraite and talkative by turns, subject to long silences, followed by bursts of wild gaiety. The change in his manner to her was very marked, he no longer teased and chaffed her as he had been wont to do, but treated her with a quiet affection, almost a deference; the camaraderie offered to a friend who has come abreast of oneself on the hard path of life. Jacqueline in trouble, gallant and uncomplaining and piteously gay, was a Jacqueline who appealed to every instinct of chivalry in his fine nature.

If it had not been for Kate herself, the thing she so greatly desired might very well have come to pass just then. He might have fallen in love with Jacqueline. But unfortunately Kate was there, never lovelier than in her guarding, tender maternity; and for Philip other women, as women, did not exist.

Into this rather disturbed atmosphere of Storm arrived one day the new Mrs. Thorpe, quite unexpectedly and with something of a flourish.

Jacqueline, hearing outside the sound of a mellifluous horn which she did not recognize, ran to the window and reported company approaching, "But it isn't Mr. Farwell, Mummy, and it isn't victims. It's a lady all dressed up. Why, Mummy, it's—no, it can't be. Yes it is too! It's the bride and groom, in a new Ark!"

Jemima was herself engineering a smart blue-painted touring-car up the hill, somewhat cautiously but with her usual air of determination. She remarked tensely to the beaming gentleman beside her, "Wave to them, James, please. I can't spare a hand."

When the excited greetings were over, Jemima looked about her with a contented sigh. "New York was very grand and rich, but I'm glad to be back in this queer, shabby old house. Aunt Jemima asked all about everything, Mother—whether you had left the stuffed horse's head on the wall, whether the turkeys still tried to roost on the front porch, what you had done with father's old servants, especially Mahaly—she seemed to be particularly interested in Mahaly, for some reason or other. I told her everything was just as it had been always—and it is, thank goodness!" She spoke as if she had expected to find cataclysmic changes after an absence of three weeks. "Dogs overrunning the place, and Big Liza warbling at the top of her lungs in the kitchen, and you in your second-best riding skirt at this hour in the afternoon—naughty mother! Everything just the same as if—" Her roving eyes chanced to rest on her sister's face, and she stopped short.

"So you saw your Aunt Jemima?" asked Kate quickly, to change the subject.

"Oh, yes, of course, Mother. That's one reason we went to New York." She was full of the visit to her father's aunt, and forgot for the moment her shock at the change in Jacqueline. "Such a wonderful place—a house as big as a hotel, and lawns that are evidently shaved and clipped and bathed as regularly as her pet poodle. But—think of it! She is seventy years old, and powdered and rouged like an actress!—Her manner was just a little—patronizing at first, but she soon got over that."

Thorpe chuckled. "My wife astonished her into a lamb-like meekness. She informed her that while she resembled the Kildare portraits to some slight degree, most of them were rather handsomer."

"Jemmy! Why, she was a famous beauty in her day!"

"Well, she isn't now; and I did not care for her manner," said the bride, calmly. "Besides, as it turned out, she liked rudeness. Some people do, you know. They think it's smart, and she's a very smart old person—likes a fast motor-car, and plays cards for money—hates to lose, too—and smokes, Mother! I kept thinking how surprised you would have been to see her."

"Pooh, that's nothing," said Jacqueline, moved to defend the honor of Storm. "Lots of women around here smoke. Why, you'll catch Big Liza with a pipe in her mouth at any time you go out in the kitchen!"

"Jacky, a pipe! The idea! Aunt Jemima has little gold-tipped cigarettes with her monogram on them. It's very much done."

"Blossom," cried Jacqueline accusingly, "did you smoke, yourself?"

The bride tossed her head, flushing. "Of course. One can't be too provincial." (The a in her "can't" had achieved a new and impressive breadth—which, considering that the honeymoon had been of only three weeks' duration, may serve to show something of the force and adaptability of Jemima's character.) "Still," she added, "I should not care to see mother smoking. I was rather—shocked by Aunt Jemima."

Kate smiled. She would not have been shocked. Her husband had too often spoken of his aunt as a true Kildare, and related with pride certain incidents in her career which had done their share toward creating the reputation of "the wild Kildares." It had always been a matter of astonishment to her that this wicked old woman, whose past might certainly have made for leniency in judgment, should have shown herself so hotly unforgiving toward the one episode she had selected to regard as the family scandal.

James Thorpe, the psychologist, could have told her that the recognized tolerance of innocence for vice has its complement in the approval with which unblemished reputations are regarded by those who have them not. Also, there was an unspoken tradition among her husband's people, as in many families, that while born Kildares, male or female, might exercise their Heaven-sent prerogative of behaving as they chose, it was for their mates to maintain the balance of discretion. Poor Kate had maintained no balance.

"Oh, speaking of New York," said the bride suddenly, "whom else do you suppose I saw there? Your friend the author, Jacky! Oh, not to speak to, of course ... James has broken with him entirely. Besides, he was with a person, a very blonde and pretty person, whom I did not care to meet." She smoothed down her skirts, the gesture of conscious rectitude the world over. "I should not be surprised if she were that woman—you know! Fay Something-or-other—"

Kate's warning glance reached her, and she bit her tongue.

Jacqueline had gone over to a window and stood looking out. "I miss the old Ark," she said after a moment. "What have you done with it?"

Jemima rushed into speech, her eyebrows flying distress signals at her mother. "Oh, that old thing? Why, when James bought the new car, I thought it would be nice to have the other painted and fixed up and give it to Philip for a present."

"Splendid!" said Kate. "It will be the greatest sort of help to him in his parochial visits—if you can persuade him to accept it. I've been trying for months to give him a decent horse to take the place of old Tom. What made you think of it?"

Jemima looked rather embarrassed. "Why, you see I have not been very—nice to Phil, lately. Not friendly, at least, as I used to be. But he's gone on just the same, as if nothing were the matter, just as dignified, and kindly; marrying us so beautifully, and sending us those rare candelabra, and all ... I like that way of acting, Mother, and I like Philip. So I thought it would be nice to give him the Ark as—as a sort of apology, you see."

Kate and James Thorpe exchanged a glance of mutual congratulation. Evidently the incipient feud was a thing of the past. Marriage was already rubbing off some of Jemima's edges.

"In that case," said Kate warmly, "I am sure Philip will accept the Ark, daughter. He would never refuse an apology.—Jacky, why don't you go and telephone him that the Thorpes are here, and that he is expected for supper?"

Jacqueline slipped out of the room very gratefully. The tears had been welling up behind her eyes so fast that she was afraid some of them would spill over. She wanted desperately to be alone until she had accustomed herself to the thought of Channing with another woman. A blonde, pretty person, Jemima had said.—At least she did not sound like a person who could help him to write books!

As soon as they were alone, Jemima demanded explanations of her mother. "What has happened to Jacky? Why, she's all eyes! I never saw such a change! Her smile makes you want to cry, somehow.—Mother, it can't be—Channing?"

"I am afraid it is—" sighed Kate.

"Then she really cared for him? Why, but that's incredible! Such a man, Mother! James has told me a good deal about him. He's a sort of male vampire, always needing a woman to pet and admire him—any sort of woman. And our Jacqueline!" Her lips set. "Humph! If the child still cares for him, I'll see that she hears the whole truth about him. Jacky's not lacking in pride."

"I hope and pray it is only her pride that is suffering now," said Kate, and took Jemima fully into her confidence. It was a great relief to talk it over with somebody. She realized how she had missed this cool and level-headed child of hers.

But when she had finished, Jemima was by no means cool and level-headed. All her pretty married complacency had gone. She was more excited than her mother had ever seen her. She jumped up and began to walk around the room, muttering rather surprising things.

"Why did you let him go? The horrid beast! Oh, poor little Jacky, poor little Jacky! Why did you let him off, Mother? Why didn't you—shoot him?"

"Daughter!"

"Well, I don't care," muttered the girl, defiantly. "I can understand killing a man like that, I can!"

A queer little smile twitched at Kate's lips. "Can you, my dear?"

Jemima stopped short, and her eyes met her mother's, widening. She realized of what Kate was thinking. "Yes, I can," she repeated, breathlessly. "A man like that ... Mother! Was my father—a—man like that?"

But Kate spoke quickly, as if she had not heard. "Then you think I did right in letting Jacqueline believe Channing had failed her?"

The girl thought it over. "No," she said at last, with her usual ruthlessness. "I don't. No good ever comes of deception, Mother. Look what it has done already! Poor Mag ran away because she was afraid of not keeping your secret."

Kate winced. "But I have Jacqueline!"

"And of course," conceded the other thoughtfully, "Mag would have gone to the bad anyway, soon or late.—Oh, yes, she would, Mother! No use blinking facts. As she used to say, she was 'spiled anyway.' On the whole," Jemima decided, "I think you have done the best thing possible. But I wish I had been here!—What are you going to do with Jacky now? Let her study singing?"

Kate realized the silence that had latterly fallen on Storm. The girl had not sung a note in weeks. Both piano and graphophone had been idle. She spoke of this.

"That's bad! Music has always meant so much to Jacky. She'll have to have an outlet of some sort. Better let her come home with me, Mother. I'll get her interested in something."

Kate shook her head. "Try, if you like, but she won't go. She's more 'mommerish' than ever just now, poor baby. She needs mothering, I think—and marrying!"

Jemima looked up quickly. "You mean Philip? Surely, Mother, you've given up the Philip idea, after this!"

"Why should I?"

"Why, Mother! Would it be fair to him? Don't you realize that poor little Jacky has been almost—wicked?"

"No, no, dear, never wicked! Only ignorant, and desperately in love. It seemed to her the honorable thing to do to go away openly with the man she loved, instead of concealing it.—Oh, can't you understand? Don't you see the difference between generous, blind sacrifice, and what you call 'wickedness'?"

"No," said Jemima, with pursed lips. "I must confess I can't. That happens to be my weakness.—But I can see, and have always seen, that Jacqueline is one of the sort of people who ought to be married as early in life as possible."

"Exactly! And who better for her than Philip?"

Jemima looked at her mother in utter exasperation. Was it possible that she was still blind to the thing that was the gossip of the countryside? Or—a new thought!—was it possible that she was going to take advantage of Philip's devotion to her, of his idealism and capacity for self-immolation, to persuade him into carrying out her long-laid plans? Jemima herself might have been capable of such a ruthless thing, but on consideration she did not believe it of her mother. There was a certain large innocence about Mrs. Kildare, an almost virginal shyness of mind, that made it difficult for her to conceive, even in the face of direct evidence, that a man younger than herself, a man whom she chose to regard as a son, could be regarding her in turn with eyes other than filial. Jemima did her the justice to recognize this.

She opened her lips to inform her mother of the truth, but somehow found herself saying instead, rather lamely, "She's not in love with Philip!"

Kate smiled. "This from you, my dear?"

The bride flushed. "When I spoke as I did about love not being necessary to marriage, I was thinking of myself, not of Jacqueline," she explained with dignity. "People have different requirements. Besides, I happened not to be in love with anybody else."

"That does make a difference, but I am counting on time," said the mother. "Time and propinquity. You are not old enough yet to realize the strength of those two factors, my dear. I am.—You said once that Jacqueline was oversexed. I think you are wrong. She simply matured very early, without our realising it. Certain instincts are very strong in her—the maternal instinct, for one—stronger than her judgment.—Just as it was with me. She is not the first poor little trusting dreamer to put up her altar to the Unknown God, and worship before the first who chooses to usurp it. But the altar remains, when the usurper has passed."

"For Philip to occupy? Poor Phil!" murmured Jemima under her breath.

Her mother wheeled round upon her. "Why do you say 'poor Phil'?" she demanded indignantly. "Do you suppose I would offer Jacques' son anything but the best I have to give? Don't you know that I am thinking of his happiness quite as much, perhaps more than of Jacqueline's? His is a bigger nature than yours, my daughter. He would never make the mistake of thinking the child capable of 'wickedness,' no matter what folly she might commit."

"And does he know of her latest 'folly,' Mother?"

"I do not know how much he may suspect, but that is not my affair. Jacqueline will tell him about it herself, doubtless ... after they are married," replied Kate, serenely.

Others entering the room just then put a stop to the conversation; but for the rest of the evening young Mrs. Thorpe was thoughtful. She knew the Madam's capacity for carrying out intentions. Watching Philip closely, his brotherly tenderness to Jacqueline contrasted with the silent, almost worshipful adoration her mother took so astonishingly for granted, she realized that it would be difficult for his lady to put any test to his devotion too difficult for him to perform. It seemed probable that Kate would succeed in covering one blunder with another blunder.

A great sympathy for Philip came over her—sympathy being a recently developed trait of Jemima's. She saw him suddenly as a piteous figure, even more piteous than her listless young sister, who would, after all, revive like a thirsty flower with the first draft of love that came to her reaching roots. Her mother had been right there.—But what was to atone to Philip for his lonely childhood, his lonely youth, always with the shadow resting upon it; his hopeless infatuation for a woman who would not see, his whole life devoted to that cold and thankless lot of service to others?

"We've taken too much from Philip as it is," she thought. "I must put a stop to this, somehow!"

She decided to drop a hint of warning to Jacqueline herself. Treachery it might be, but, as has been seen, Jemima was quite capable of treachery when it marched with expediency.

Drop a hint she accordingly did, one of her own especial brand of hints, as delicate and as subtle as a dynamite bomb.

It occurred at bedtime, when Jemima—the Thorpes were spending the night—slipped across into the room that had been the nursery to chat with her sister in the old-time intimacy of hair-brushing. Indeed, the room was still a nursery, for the crib that had been in turn Jemima's and Jacqueline's was drawn up close beside Jacqueline's bed, and contained the rosy, sleeping Kitty, with a favorite rattle tight clasped in one pink fist.

"Isn't she too precious, Jemmy?" whispered her foster-mother, who was leaning over the crib as her sister entered.

Jemima responded without particular enthusiasm—to her small Kitty would always represent in concrete form the doctrine of Original Sin. She said, "Come and let me show you how to fix your hair, dear, as they do it in New York. You're old enough now to wear it up."

"I try to, but it won't stay put, there's such a mop of it!" She submitted willingly to the other's deft ministrations. "Neither mother nor I look half as nice since you got married, Jemmy. Oh, I do love your smooth hands!" She held one affectionately to her cheek. "They're so nimble and sure of themselves, as if each finger had a little brain of its own that knew just exactly what it was about."

"I suppose, if one has a brain at all, it's everywhere, in the fingers as well as the head; just like God in the universe," said the other, rather absently. "Anyway, if I've got brains, you've got hair, and I don't know but what that's more important. You'll be a lovely creature like mother when I'm a weazened little old woman, as bald as a monkey—or with false things on, like Aunt Jemima. Intellectual hair is always so thin and brittle."

"Why, Blossom! Yours is just like curly sunlight!"

"Oh, yes, pretty while it lasts," said the other, dispassionately. "But not vital, like yours and mother's. You're both so splendidly vital. That's why—Look here, Jacky, Philip's more gone on mother than ever, isn't he? He just follows her around with his eyes, like that sentimental hound puppy who is always trying to crawl into her lap—"

"And spilling off," finished Jacqueline, with a chuckle. "I know! If she says 'good dog' to him, he wags steadily for an hour.—I used to think you were wrong about it," she added seriously, "and that Phil couldn't possibly be in love with any one so old as mother; not like men are with girls, you know. But lately—I'm not so sure."

Poor Jacqueline had learned a good deal lately about the possibilities of loving.

Jemima commented with satisfaction. "I'm glad you see it, anyway!"

"Of course he has not told me anything, but he—understands so well," sighed the other, without explaining what it was that he understood. "I wish he didn't, Jemmy. I would like to see dear old Phil happy! He's such a darling.—Do you suppose we could possibly persuade mother ever to marry him?"

Jemima started and dropped her hair-brush. That was a solution which had not occurred to her.

"I think it would be such a good thing, don't you, Jemmy? They're both so wonderful."

"Nonsense!" said Jemima sharply, recovering from the shock. "What an idea! Mother wouldn't dream of such an unseemly thing, of course."

"I'm not so sure," said Jacqueline, with her new pathetic little wisdom. "She's awfully sweet to Phil, always wanting him round, and petting him, and making a fuss over him."

"Just as she does over that hound puppy! No, my dear, you may be sure that whatever she does, mother will never do anything so undignified as to marry Dr. Benoix' son. On the contrary, I happen to know that she is plotting to marry him to some one else."

"Jemmy! Our Philip? To whom?"

The hint dropped. "To you," said Jemima.

But it was not greeted with the shocked surprise, the incredulous dismay, which she had counted upon. Jacqueline considered the matter in silence for some moments. At length she said, musingly, "That might not be a bad idea. Philip really ought to get married—the Bishop told him so. It creates confidence, like with young doctors. And if you really think mother never will—Of course I could keep house for him, and hold the Mothers' Meetings and all, and make him more comfortable than that wretched Dilsey."

Jemima gasped.—"Do you mean to say you would?—So soon?" She bit her tongue, but Jacqueline did not seem to notice the unfortunate reference.

"Oh, me?" she said a little wearily. "What does it matter about me? I mean—I suppose a girl has to marry some time, and I'm used to Philip. I'm awfully fond of him, really. He'd make a wonderful father, wouldn't he?"

"Jacqueline Kildare!" cried the bride, blushing.

The girl met her startled eyes in the glass. For the moment she seemed the older of the two. "Why, didn't you think of that when you married Goddy? No, you wouldn't have, I suppose. But it seems to me the most important thing of all, you know. It is something that will last, when—other things—don't. It seems to me people could stand a great deal of unhappiness," she said haltingly, "if they had babies. They wouldn't always be asking themselves, Why? Why? The answer would be there, right in their arms.—So if mother really wants me to marry Philip, and he doesn't mind ... I don't believe I shall mind, either."

Jemima made her last stand. "Suppose Philip does mind?"

"Then he won't ask me, of course, goosie!—Do show me how you made that perfectly beautiful puff."

Jemima returned to her lord and master somewhat subdued and crestfallen. She realized that for once she had overreached herself.

Jemima's opposition had the effect, usual with determined natures, of crystallizing Mrs. Kildare's purpose, and she watched with impatience a situation that appeared rather slow in developing. Philip, touched to the heart by the change in Jacqueline, devoted much time and thought to her comforting, overtures which the girl met more than half way. The two were constantly together now, galloping over the frosty fields, driving about the country in the newly arrived Ark (which understanding Philip had accepted with a generosity that matched Jemima's), or reading aloud to each other in front of the roaring fire in Storm hall.

Kate, realizing however unconsciously that when she was about he had less attention for her daughter, kept out of their way as much as possible. It occurred to her that Philip was rather neglecting his parish in Jacqueline's behalf. She smiled to herself, and frequently commended Providence for its assistance.

But Providence moved a trifle slowly for a woman accustomed to prompt and decisive action. She yearned to advise Philip to strike while the iron was hot, to claim the girl for his own before her natural youth and high spirits reasserted themselves and made her less susceptible to tenderness. She wanted to see the two she loved happy together, as she had wanted nothing else since she put the thought of happiness out of her own life. Why were they wasting so much priceless time?

Suddenly, one afternoon, as she was riding home to Storm, the reason occurred to her. Philip's pride! the same pride that would permit him to accept no help from her even as a boy, when the small income his mother left him would have been insufficient to carry him through school and seminary if he had not managed to secure tutoring positions to eke out. He had accepted, perforce, the home she offered him during vacations, but nothing more, not even a horse for his personal use. He was a poor man, would perhaps always be a poor man, dependent upon the meager salary of a country clergyman; and he was the son of a convict to boot. Was it likely that he would ask in marriage the hand of one of the young heiresses of Storm? How stupid she had been!

"Bless the boy! I'll have to take this thing in hand myself," thought Kate Kildare, glad of an excuse, and turned her horse's head toward the rectory.

Philip, absorbed in putting final touches to his next day's sermon, looked up from his desk to see her smiling in at the door of the room that was his study, his dining-room and his parlor combined.

He sprang to his feet. "You!" he cried, with a look in his eyes that might have told its own story to a woman less accustomed to appreciative male glances. "I—I was just thinking of you."

That was true enough. She would have found it difficult to come upon him at a time when he was not thinking of her, somewhere in the back of his mind. Lately, whenever he had been with Jacqueline, the girl reminded him so constantly, so almost poignantly, of her mother that sometimes he caught himself speaking to her in the very voice he used with his lady, a softer, deeper voice that was the unconscious expression of the inmost man. His congregation heard it sometimes, too, now that Mrs. Kildare had come to sit among them.—He had been writing out his sermon with unusual care because he had remembered that she would listen to it.

He ran to wheel his shabby wing-chair up to the fire, where a pot of coffee simmered on the hob, with a covered plate beside it.

"My supper," he explained, with a gesture of apology. "I often cook in here because it seems more cozy than the kitchen."

"Is Dilsey misbehaving again?"

He nodded ruefully. "I can't think where she gets the stuff, Miss Kate; the store won't sell it to her."

"Out of your emergency cupboard, I fancy. You give her all your keys, of course, for fear she will imagine you don't trust her? Oh, Phil, Phil," she laughed at his guilty face. "How you do need a wife to look after you!"

She settled herself comfortably in the comfortable chair, looking about the pleasant, twilit room with the sense of well-being that always came to her there. It was more homelike to her than the home where she had lived for twenty years, her big rough house that had taken on so irrevocably the look of the Kildares. Here faded brocade furniture, books, well-shaded lamps, a blue bowl filled with rosy apples, a jar of cedar-boughs that took the place of flowers now that the garden had gone to its winter rest—all these things spoke to her, as they spoke to Philip, of other days, of his father, even of the shadowy lady with her slight, patient cough who had been his mother, and whom Kate always winced to remember. In this place she felt among friends. She was happy to think of her Jacqueline come at last into such a haven as Philip's home.

"Bring me some of your supper—especially the coffee, it smells so good!—and then come and sit beside me. Here—" she indicated a low hassock at her feet—"where I can tweak your ear if I want to; because I'm going to scold."

Philip obeyed in silence. He had fallen rather shy of her, now that he had her here as he had so often dreamed, sitting beside him in the twilight, sharing his supper, leaning her head against the cushions of his own chair, her slender arched feet, in their trim riding-boots, resting upon his fender. It was not often that the Madam found time or occasion to stop at the Rectory. What need, indeed, when Philip was so constantly at Storm? But the image of her sat more often than she guessed just as she was sitting now, with a worshiper at her feet.

His own thoughts, more than her presence, kept him silent. The phrase she had uttered so carelessly (he did not altogether know his lady there!) had set them clamoring—"How you do need a wife to look after you...."

Philip tried in vain to remember a time when he had not loved this woman. As a child, made older than his years by the shadow of his mother's invalidism, he had treasured his glimpses of the reckless, beautiful girl with her two babies, as other children might treasure glimpses into fairyland. As an older boy, with his world already in ruins about him, he had idealized his one friend into a sort of goddess, a super-human deity who could do no wrong, whose every word was magic and whose slightest wish law. At that period, if Kate had bade him rob a bank or commit a murder, he would have done it unquestioningly, happy only to be of service to her. Later, as he grew into a thoughtful young manhood, he came to understand that even deities may have their faults; but Kate's were dear faults, never of the heart. As she became less goddess she became more human, and so nearer to him, until at last she was woman to his man. But a very wonderful woman, to be approached, even in thought, with reverence. Philip's love had so grown with him, step by step, as to be part of the fabric of himself, large now as his very nature; and that was large indeed.

Yet never once in all the years had he imagined the sacrilege of making her his wife, until there came the farewell letter from his father in prison; that man used to reading the hearts of men, who saw the truth between the lines of his son's letters, and deliberately gave the woman both loved into his son's keeping.

"She is still young," Jacques Benoix had written, "and you are young, and my time is over. You must be to her what I would have been. We must consider now nothing but her greatest happiness, you and I, her greatest good."

Since then Philip, if he had not thought of it before, thought of little else than of marrying Kate Kildare.

Not soon, of course; not until time should have brought its blessed balm of forgetfulness, when both the girls would be married and gone, perhaps, and she in her loneliness would turn to him. Meanwhile he must be at hand to take care of her, as his father had bidden him; to watch over her unobtrusively, helping her as he had with Jacqueline, sharing any trouble that came to her; making himself necessary in every way possible, so that more and more he should take with her the place of his father.

Kate was wrong in her ideas that his poverty had much influence upon Philip. Poverty and wealth mean little to the idealist; and his faith was very strong. He knew that if God gave this beloved woman into his keeping, He would provide very surely the means of keeping her.

He was patient, too; yet lately all the talk of love and of marriage, the companionship of wistful, lovelorn Jacqueline, perhaps, the sight of James Thorpe's almost fatuous happiness, had made patience newly difficult; had stirred a restlessness in him that sometimes he believed his lady noticed. When she was in the room with him, whether they spoke or not, he found it almost impossible to keep his eyes from her; and when at such times their glances met, it seemed to him there was a quick flash of response in hers, an understanding look, almost of expectancy, as if she were waiting for him to say something he did not say.

Philip was of course right. Nothing of the change in him had been lost on Kate; only she attributed it unfortunately to another cause—to Jacqueline.

She was chattering desultorily about many things, as they sat there in the deepening November dusk, by the fire; but he did not hear what she was saying. He began to look covetously out of the corner of his eye toward one of her hands that lay on the arm of the chair close beside him; a big, beautiful hand like Kate herself, capable as little Jemima's, but with the warmth, the healing in its touch, of Jacqueline's own. When he pictured her to himself, he always saw first her eyes, clear and direct as a boy's; then her lovely, curved lips; then these sentient hands of hers. He wished that he had the courage to take the hand in his own, to hold it against his breast, his cheek. It had been his often enough to hold, and even to kiss; but always of her own volition. She was as generous of caresses as her youngest daughter; but it never occurred to Philip, nor had it perhaps occurred to other men who loved her, that they might venture to take what she did not offer. Kate was the giver, always.

Even now, as if aware of his thoughts, the hand lifted, strayed over to touch the hair on his temples lightly as a butterfly, and came to rest on his shoulder, drawing him a little closer. He sat very still, thrilling to its touch. She might as well at that moment have laid her hand on his bare heart. He wondered how many more seconds he could bear it before he flung himself on his knees beside her and buried his face in her lap....

"It's nice in here, so warm and dusky and comfy," she said. "Easier to talk here than in that bare, ugly office of mine. I'm glad I came.—Now the scolding is going to commence." The hand patted him affectionately. "Phil, dear, are you quite as frank with me as you used to be? Do you still tell me everything you think and do and are? Isn't there something you keep back nowadays?"

"Nothing," he answered in a rather choked voice, making one mental reservation.

"If I hadn't your full confidence, I should miss it more than I can say. You've spoiled me, dear. I want to be in everything that concerns you."

"You are," breathed poor Philip.

She leaned a little toward him. "No confidences, then? Nothing to ask me, boy? Because it would be yours without asking." She waited a moment. Silence—a very tense silence. "I don't know whether I've ever told you how much I love you, how much I admire you. Only it's more than that. You are the sort of man—my dear, if I could have had a son like you, I should have been the proudest woman in the world! It breaks my heart to think that Jacques does not know his great boy."

She felt him trembling under her touch, and went on with her encouragement. "Think of what you have to offer the woman you love! Most men come to us soiled, with fingerprints on them which the most forgiving wife can never seem to wash quite away. But you—you are as clean as your mother left you.—Look at me, Philip! Yes, I knew it.—And what a home you will make for her! Money never made a home yet—it spoils more homes than it helps, I think, because it does away with the effort that makes anything worth while.—Oh, my dear boy, I think I shall be envious of the girl you marry!"

The voice speaking was the one she had kept, as she once told Jacqueline, to sing lullabies to her babies with—surely the most exquisite, tender, caressing voice in the world, thought Philip. He tried to listen to what she was saying, but heard only the voice. His senses were swimming in it. Suddenly he leant over and laid his cheek against her rough riding-skirt.

"Why, dearest boy!" The voice softened still more, and he felt her hands in his hair. "Did you think you could hide anything from me? What a goose! Don't you suppose I saw? I have been wondering for days why you didn't tell me. And then I knew. The money—is that, it? But how perfectly silly, dear! There's enough and more than enough for two, but if you prefer it, your bride shall come to you as poor as any churchmouse, glad and proud to do with whatever you are able to give her. We don't care much for—just things, we Kildares!"

He raised his face, incredulous, listening at last to her words; a dawning rapture in his eyes. She had seen. Was she offering herself to him, Philip, as a goddess might lean to a mortal? He could not speak....

"And then I've thought," she went on, "that perhaps the thing between your two fathers was holding you back. Don't let it, ah, don't let it! Before that all happened, they were friends, dear friends. Your father was the one man Basil loved. And some day when we are all together somewhere, afterwards—if there is an afterwards!—I believe they will be friends again. It was all a hideous mistake. Surely mistakes can't last through eternity? That is my idea of what Heaven is; a place where we shall understand each other's mistakes, and forgive them. But you and Jacqueline—oh, Philip! Philip! try not to make any mistakes, you two! I couldn't bear that."

Philip was himself now, hearing every word. He whispered haltingly, praying that he had misunderstood, "What—was it you thought I—wished to say to you?"

She laughed a little. "I thought—and think—you were trying to summon up courage to ask me for my Jacqueline!"

He had risen to take his blow standing. In the dusk that filled the room above the fire-line, she could not see his face.

She went on after a moment, "And I can't, can't tell you how happy it made me, how secure.—For a while I was so troubled. Channing, you know—I thought I should have to give up my hopes.—But now he has gone, and you are here; dear, faithful fellow, so big and true! For years I've dreamed of this, ever since she was born. You and Jacqueline, his child and mine, finding together all that we have missed. And some day, your children—Ah, my dear, don't waste your moments! Years go so fast, and they do not come back."

He made a queer, hoarse sound in his throat. Kate peered up at him, for the first time suspecting something amiss. "Philip," she exclaimed, "why don't you say something? Aren't you glad that I am glad?"

Glad!—In the chaos that was his mind, only one thing stood out clear to him. His fingers unconsciously gripped the small gold cross that hung at his belt, and clung to it. He had dedicated his life to service, first of God and second of his fellow-men, chief of whom was the woman before him. All his life he had dreamed of serving her. In his boyish heroics he had defended her from lions, rescued her and her children from Indians, carried her on his back out of burning houses. Lonely youth and lonely man, dreams formed a greater part of his life than of most men's, and all of them centered about the great figure of his existence, Kate Kildare.

Now the opportunity was come. He was to serve her indeed, and sacrificially. He saw with a horrible clarity where his duty lay, and wondered that he had not seen it before. She needed him for Jacqueline as she would never need him for herself. Young Benoix was of the stuff of which martyrs are made; but as he stood there, gripping the little cross of his calling, he prayed wordlessly, desperately, that his cup might pass from him.

Kate had risen too, and stood dismayed by his silence, trying to read his face by the flickering light. "Philip, what is it? Have I made a mistake after all? Don't you love Jacqueline?" Her heart began to beat rather fast. Something of what was in the air she sensed, but without understanding.

What was it she was asking him? Oh, yes—whether he loved Jacqueline. Dear little clinging, pathetic child! of course he loved her. He must answer. He made a great effort and spoke, nodding his head.

"Yes. Oh, yes. I do love her."

Kate came closer, close enough to see the dumb pain in his eyes. She exclaimed aloud, "Philip! Is it Channing then, after all? You think he has come between you—irrevocably? No, but you are wrong! That is over, absolutely over. It is for you to take out the sting.—See, Philip, I am going to be quite frank with you, franker than women generally are, even with themselves. You don't know much about girls. I do—about my own girl, at least, for I was just such a girl once.—There comes a time to young women, as to all young animals, when we look about us for our mates. We may not seek, perhaps, but we look about. And the first that comes—is very welcome, Philip.—That is all. Nature's way. If Jacqueline still thinks of Channing—well, it is only blessed human instinct to put aside the thing that hurts. But you must help her—she can't do it, alone. Only a new love drives out the hurt of the old. Jacqueline needs you, dear."

He put out a protesting hand. She was asking him for help, his lady. He must not let her beg....

He said with stiff lips, "You think—she—would be willing—to marry me?"

Kate nodded. "I suspect she'd like to show Mr. Channing as soon as possible how little impression he has left behind him!—But it wouldn't be that, of course," she added, seriously. "Underneath the other affair, she's always been a little in love with you, Philip. Women are complex creatures, with a capacity for being attracted quite in proportion to their capacity for attracting.... And after you are once married—You know, there's really no mystery about mating, except what the poets make. Nature goes about it with a beautiful simplicity. Given two young creatures, handsome, clean, healthy, mutually sympathetic, throw them together a while without too many distractions—and there you are! It's as inevitable as that two and two make four. Don't think too much about it, dear—you're too watchful, too introspective. Just let go, and be natural. She's very sweet, my Jacqueline, very loving and tender. And you—well, you're not unattractive, you know! Don't worry.—Why, I give you my word as a mother, as a woman," she exclaimed, "that a month after you and Jacqueline are married, you will both have forgotten any ridiculous little obstacle that ever kept you apart!..."