More and more, as the days passed, Kate congratulated herself on having taken Jacqueline's affairs in hand before any harm was done. Startled out of her own preoccupation by Jemima's discovery of how matters stood between Jacqueline and the author, she continued to watch the younger girl narrowly; but she saw no signs of secret grief, nor even of wounded pride. The girl had never been more radiant, her cheeks a-glow, her eyes so soft and lustrous that sometimes her mother's grew dim at sight of them. She remembered a time when her own mirror had shown her just such a look of brooding revery.

"Channing has done nothing more than wake her womanhood," thought the mother. "And now, now it is Philip's turn!"

Philip, since his return from the mountains, spent more time than ever at Storm. Kate noted with satisfaction the added gentleness of his manner with Jacqueline, and threw them together as much as possible. Jemima, too, seemed to have a great deal of time to give her younger sister in those days. Between them all, Jacqueline was rarely alone; but she had no longer any wish to be alone. She avoided the Ruin now, and took no more long rides about the country, except with Kate. She clung to her mother with the persistency of a child who is recovering from an illness.

Jemima had taken it upon herself to watch the mails, and reported that there were no letters for Jacqueline. Channing evidently intended to keep his word implicitly.

Jacqueline had received her mother's explanation of his conduct quite calmly.

"Let's not discuss it, Mummy," she begged, flushing a little. "Of course if Mr. Charming was already married, that way, he couldn't ask me to marry him. I understand." She attempted one little apology for him. "Geniuses aren't quite—quite like other men, and they ought to be judged differently, Mummy."

Her sister, who was present at the interview, came over to her here, and bestowed one of her rare kisses. Pride and dignity always had a strong appeal for Jemima....

When she had first gone to her mother with her suspicions, Kate was aghast. "In love with each other, child! Why, that's impossible. Where have they seen each other? He is an intellectual, sophisticated young man of the world,—and our Jacky—!"

"The attraction of opposites," Jemima reminded her.

For just one moment, the mother's thoughts were selfish. If Jacqueline after all did not marry Philip, what would become of her own vindication, that triumphant answer to the world for which she had so patiently waited? She put the old plan from her with a sigh.

"Of course Channing would be a good match for little Jacqueline. But I had hoped," she said, half to herself, "that my child might marry Philip."

Jemima gave her a queer, quick glance. "You think Philip wants that?"

Kate nodded. "Perhaps he does not know it yet, though."

The girl said haltingly, "I have always thought that Philip was rather fond of—you, Mother."

"Of me? So he is. Philip has loved me since he was a little boy," she answered, smiling tenderly. "All the more reason for him to love my Jacqueline. We are very much alike, only that she is prettier, and younger—which counts, of course.—But now you say she wants to marry this Channing."

"I do not say that he wants to marry her."

"Jemmy!"

"Well, why should he?" asked the girl, evenly. "It would not be a good match for Mr. Channing. His family are conservative Boston people. Can you imagine Jacky among conservative Boston people? Sliding down banisters, riding bareback, making eyes at all the men—"

"That is not what you mean," said her mother, rather white about the lips. "You mean the scandal about me. Yes, that would make a difference.—You think it is only a flirtation, then?"

"On his part, yes. On Jacqueline's—I don't know. But even flirtation is not very safe for Jacqueline. Remember her inheritance." Jemima met her mother's wincing eyes firmly.

"What do you mean?" gasped the older woman.

"I mean—that Jacqueline is oversexed." She had no intention of seeing her little sister come to grief for lack of frankness. "I know it, and you know it, and we both know that it is not her fault." She added after a moment, "I have reason to believe that Mr. Channing is not a marrying man. There was talk in Lexington—If I were you I should write to Professor Jim and ask him."

Kate promptly took her advice, with the results that have been seen; and her respect for the acumen of her elder child became somewhat akin to awe.

Nor was Jemima at the end of her surprises for her mother.

One morning she followed Kate rather aimlessly into her office; a thing almost unprecedented, for Mrs. Kildare was rarely disturbed in her sanctum except upon matters of business.

"You wish to see me about something, daughter?"

"Oh, no, I just wanted to talk."

Kate's heart thumped suddenly. It was a long time since the girl had sought her out for one of their old confidential chats about nothing in particular. She had been almost glad of the trouble about Jacqueline because for the moment it had brought her close again to her other child. The newly formed alliance was evidently to continue.

She said lightly, "Talk away, then!"

Jemima wandered about the room, examining this thing and that, without attention. "You've never asked me a question about the visit to Mrs. Lawton, nor why I came home sooner than I had expected to."

"I did not dare," admitted Kate, smiling a little. "I was afraid the great experiment had not proved a success."

"Oh, but it was. A great success!—That is not why I came home so soon."

"Why, then?"

Jemima gave a most unexpected answer. "Because I was homesick."

Tears of pure pleasure came into Kate's eyes.

"You see, I'd never been away from home before, and I had no idea how much I should miss you-all. But people were very kind to me; on Professor Jim's account, I think."

"Dear old Jim!" said Kate, softly. "He deserves loyal friends, because he knows so well how to be one.—I have missed him lately. When is he coming home again?"

"To-day. He will be out to-morrow for supper, as usual."

"Oh, yes, it is Friday, isn't it? What an odd idea, that lecture tour!—so unlike Jim. He has always been so shy and retiring. I wonder what made him undertake it?"

"I did," said Jemima.

"You?"

"Why, yes. Some of his lectures seemed to me most unusual, much too good to waste there in Lexington. So when the opportunity was offered to him to speak in several other places, I persuaded him to accept it. We went over the talks together and made them simpler; more popular, you know. Sometimes he forgets that every audience is not composed of scholars."

Kate stared at her child in amused respect. "Do you mean to say you have added literary censorship to your various other accomplishments?"

Jemima smiled deprecatingly. "I was glad to be able to help him a little, after all he has done for us.—Look here, Mother,"—she began to finger the papers on the desk—"do you care at all for Professor Jim?"

"Of course I do!"

"No—I don't mean that way. I mean—Are you ever going to marry him, do you think?"

Kate's speechless surprise was sufficient answer.

"Because if you're not,"—the girl cleared her voice—"don't you think it would be kinder to say so once and for all? You see, if he were sure you would not have him" (suddenly hot color surged over her face), "he might want to marry some one else."

"Old Jim marry! Jemima! What are you driving at? What can you mean?"

"I mean—me," gasped the girl, and suddenly turned and fled from the room.

It took Kate some moments to regain sufficient presence of of mind to follow her. She found her level-headed daughter face downward among the pillows of her bed, sobbing most humanly.

Kate sat down beside her and pulled the golden head over into her arms, where she smoothed and caressed it as she had rarely done since the girl's babyhood.

"Now tell mother all about it. What put such a strange idea into your wise little old pate? Not Jim himself—I'm sure of that."

"Oh, no!—But it isn't a strange idea," protested the muffled voice from her lap. "I don't want to be an old maid—" (sniff, sniff). "He hasn't asked me yet, exactly—but he would if he were quite sure you didn't want him—" (sob). "And I'm twenty years old, now. I want to be married, like other women."

"Only twenty years old!" repeated her mother, gently.

"Oh, I know it sounds young, but it isn't always as young as it sounds" said the girl with unconscious pathos. "Look at me, Mother—I'm older than you, right now! I don't believe I ever was very young."

"But you may be yet," said Kate. "With your first lover, your first baby—Ah, child, child, you must not run the risk of marrying without love! You don't know what love can do to you."

"Yes, I do," whispered Jemima.

"What! You can't tell me you're in love with old Jim?"

The girl sat erect, and propounded certain decided views of hers on love and marriage as earnestly as if her little nose were not pink with embarrassed tears, and her eyes swimming with them like a troubled baby's.

"Being in love doesn't seem as important to me as it does to some people. Of course it's necessary, or the world would not go on. There has to be some sort of glamour to—to make things possible.—But I'm sure it's not a comfortable feeling to live with, any more than hunger would be.—Being in love does quite as much harm as good, anyway. Half the crimes in the world are the result of it, and all the unnecessary children. I don't want love, Mother! It hurts, and it makes fools of otherwise intelligent persons. I shouldn't like, ever, to lose my self-control.—And the feeling doesn't last! Look at you, for instance. I suppose once you were in love with my father?"

Kate nodded.

"And then in a very little while you were in love with—some one else. Did it make you any happier, all that loving, or any better? I think not. Only unhappier, in the long run.—No, no, Mother! I don't want it. I don't want any emotions!"—She spoke with a queer distaste, the same fastidious shrinking with which she had often watched Jacqueline cuddling Mag's baby. "I only want to be safe."

"Marriage isn't always safe, my little girl."

"Mine will be. That's why I've chosen Professor Jim."

Kate made a helpless gesture with her hands. "Child, you don't know what you're giving up! You can't!"

Jemima swallowed hard. The confession she had to make was not easy. "Yes, I do. Because I tried love first, to be sure."

"My dear! You—tried love?"

"There was a young man—You remember, Jacqueline called him 'the most beautiful man in the room'? He was very handsome, and—nice to me. That's why I went to visit Mrs. Lawton, chiefly. I wanted to see more of him.—Whenever he touched my hand, or even my dress, little shivers ran up my back. I—I liked it. That's being in love, isn't it? Sometimes we went driving, in a buggy. Once it was moonlight, and I knew when we started that something was going to happen.—I meant it to. I flirted with him."

"Did you, dear!" murmured the mother, between tears and laughter. "I didn't suppose you knew how!"

"Oh, those things come, somehow. I've watched Jacky.—After a while, he kissed me. But do you know, Mother, that was the end of everything! I stopped having thrills the minute he did it. His mouth was so—so mushy, and his nose seemed to get in the way.—Still, I went on flirting. I wanted to give him every chance.—He didn't kiss me again, though. When we got home I asked him why that was. He said it was because he respected me too much."

She made a scornful gesture, "You see, it's just as I thought! Kisses and all that sort of thing have nothing to do with respect, with real liking. And if my own thrills couldn't outlast one moonlight buggy-ride, they would not do to marry on. It will be better for me to marry on respect."

"But poor Jim!" said Kate, unsteadily. "Must he, too, marry on respect?"

Jemima met her gaze candidly. "Why, no. Men are different, I think, even intellectual ones. He has thrills. I can feel him having them, when I dance with him. That's how I knew he wanted me. And I'm rather glad of it," she finished, her voice oddly kind.

Kate at the moment could think of nothing further to say. The thing was incomprehensible to her, appalling, yet strangely touching. This twenty-year-old girl, groping her way toward safety, that refuge of the middle-aged, as eagerly as other young things grasp at happiness, at romance!—She recalled phrases spoken by another startled mother to another girl quite as headstrong: "You are only a child! He is twice your age! You don't know!"

She did not give them utterance. What was the use? In this, if in nothing else, Jemima was her mother's daughter. She would always make her own decisions.

The girl went on presently to mention various advantages of the proposed marriage.

"Of course Professor Jim is quite rich—Oh, yes, didn't you know that? I asked him his income, and he told me. With that, and the money you have promised me, we can travel and see the world, and keep a good house to come back to. I could do a good deal for Jacqueline, of course. You will visit us, too, whenever you like. It may be my only chance of getting away from Storm, you see. I do not meet many young men, and I'm not the sort they are apt to marry, anyway."

"Are you so anxious to get away from Storm?" interrupted poor Kate. "You said you were homesick for us."

"And will be again, often. But that's a weakness one has to get over. And then, though I have been happy here, I've been unhappy, too. Lonely and a little—ashamed, lately." She forgot for the moment to whom she was speaking. Kate had ceased to be a person, was only "mother" to her, a warm, enfolding comprehension, such as perhaps children are aware of before they come to the hour of birth.—"Oh, it will be good to live among people who don't know, who aren't always staring and whispering behind their hands about us Kildares!" she sighed.

Kate forced herself to say, impartially, "Lexington is not far away. I am afraid there will always be people there who know about us Kildares, dear."

"Lexington?" The girl's lip curled. "You don't suppose I shall let my husband spend the rest of his life in a little place like that! He has been wasted there too long already, he is a brilliant scholar, Mother, far more brilliant than people realize, too modest and simple to make the most of himself. You wait! I'll see to that."

Kate gave up. She lifted her daughter in her arms, and held her close for a long moment.

"You must do whatever you think best, my girl."

"Yes, Mother. I always do," said Jemima.

And so Mrs. Kildare had her second interview with a man who wanted, not herself, but one of her children. It made her feel very old, as if she were becoming a looker-on at life, almost an outsider.

Jemima had firmly led her choice to the door of the office and left him there, with reassuring whispers that were quite audible to the mother within. It was evident that she was bestowing counsel, and straightening his tie, and otherwise preparing him for conquest.

"Well, old Jim?" Kate looked up as he entered with a tremulous smile that drove from his mind irrevocably the fine speech he had prepared.

The professor was attired in new and dapper tweeds; the eye-glasses upon his aristocratic nose had dependent from them a rather broad black ribbon; and the shirtfront across which it dangled was of peppermint-striped silk, its dominant color repeated in silk socks appearing above patent-leather shoes. But dazzling raiment did not seem to produce in the inner man that careless courage which, as a psychologist, he had been led to expect.

"To think of coming to this house, to this room, and asking your permission to—to marry some one else! Kate," he blurted out, "I never felt such a fool in all my life!"

"And you never looked so handsome. Why, Jim, you're a boy again!" She rose and put her two hands on his shoulders, studying his sensitive, plain face, forcing his embarrassed eyes to meet hers. "My dear friend, my dear friend—So after all I am able to give you your happiness," she said softly, and kissed him for the first time in their acquaintance.

In such fashion was her consent to his marriage with Jemima asked and granted; and with it full forgiveness for his treachery to a devotion of over twenty years.

They turned their attention hastily away from sentiment to settlements. Thorpe was astonished by the amount of the dower Kate spoke of settling upon Jemima.

"Why, it is a small fortune! How did you make all this money?"

"Mules," she said. "Also hogs and dairy products, my three specialties. Mustn't the old horse-breeding Kildares turn over in their graves out there at the desecration? When I came into the property, I soon saw that racing stock was a luxury we could not afford, so I used the grass lands for mules instead. We have been lucky. Storm mules have the reputation now that Storm thoroughbreds used to have in Basil's day: and they sell at a far surer profit.

"Then I sent to an agricultural college for the best scientific farmer they had, and the best dairyman—a big expense, but they have paid. Also, we sell our products at city prices, since I persuaded the railroad to give us a spur here. We've cleared most of the land that Basil kept for cover, now, and are using every acre of it.—Oh, yes, I have made money, and I will make more. When I die the girls are going to be rich. The original Storm property will be divided between them then, according to Basil's will, you remember."

"I do remember it," said Thorpe, quietly. "There was another provision in that will.... The girls will never inherit Storm, my dear, because some day Benoix will come back to you."

She looked away out of the window. "I have given up hope, Jim. Months now, and no word from him. He has gone. Philip thinks so, too.—But you are right. If he does come, the girls will not inherit, because I shall marry him. Even if we are old people, I shall marry him."

She had lifted her head, and her voice rang out as it had rung through the prison when she cried to her lover that she would wait.

Thorpe kissed her hand. "And when that happens," he said gently, "I want you to know that Jemima will understand. I can promise that. I shall teach my wife to know her mother better."

She smiled at him, sadly. She suspected that he was promising a miracle he could not perform, counting upon an influencing factor that did not exist. "Was he fatuous enough to believe that Jemima loved him? Her fears for her child's happiness suddenly became fears for the happiness of this life-long friend. She felt that she must warn him.

"I wonder if you know just the sort of woman you are marrying, Jim? Jemima is very intelligent, and like many intelligent people she is a little—ruthless. Honorable, clear-sighted; but hard. She is more her father's child than mine. I do not always understand her, but—I do know that she is not sentimental, Jim dear."

He touched her hand reassuringly. "She has told me that she is not marrying me for love, if that is what you are trying to say. She has given me to understand, quite conscientiously, that she is merely accepting the opportunities I can offer her—I, a dull, middle-aged, dyspeptic don in a backwater college!" he chuckled. "But," he added—and the glow in his eyes was quite boyish—"I have had occasion to observe in Jemima certain symptoms—a proprietary interest in my belongings, for instance, my rooms, my welfare, my health, my—er—personal appearance—which lead me to believe that her regard for me is not entirely intellectual. In fact, I know rather more about Jemima's inner workings, so to speak, than she knows herself. One is not a psychologist for nothing! The—er—the tender passion manifests itself in various ways. Some women love with their emotions, as it were; some, God bless them! with their capable hands and brains."

Kate was deeply touched. "Perhaps you're right, Jim. I hope so, my dear. I do hope so!"

Jacqueline received the news of her sister's engagement with shouts of glee. "What a joke on you, Mummy! What a joke! Old Faithful carried off under your very nose, by your own child! And Jemmy, of all people! That's the way she did to that young man at Goddy's party. Good old Jemmy! When she warms up, I tell you she can trot a heat with the best."

"Jacky, hush!" Kate laughed despite herself. "You're getting too big to use that stable-talk. You would suppose Jemima had actually tried to entice him out of my clutches!"

"And didn't she, didn't she just? Why, you blessed innocent, she's had this up her sleeve for some time! I thought she was being mighty attentive to Goddy, teaching him to dance, and making him ties and all—only it never occurred to me she'd want—this!—Gracious!" she said, suddenly grave, "you don't suppose she kisses him, Mummy?"

"I hope so, dear. Why not? You've kissed him often enough yourself."

"And shall again, the funny old lamb! But not that way. Ugh!"

Mrs. Kildare winced to realize how far the education of her youngest had proceeded without her supervision.

Jacqueline's volatile thoughts had taken a new direction. "That means Jemmy is going away to live. 'Way off to Lexington."

Kate sighed. "Farther than that, if I know Jemima."

"Then," said the girl, slowly, "when—if—I ever go away, you'd be here all alone, Mummy!"

"Mothers expect that, dear. Always we know that some day we shall be left alone. But we do not mind, we are even glad. We risk our lives to give life to our children, and we want them to have it all, life at its fullest. Otherwise we feel that we have been failures, somehow. Breath is such a small part of life!—So when your time comes, too, my girlie, you are not to hesitate because of me. Take your future in your two hands—just as all your many mothers have done before you.—Women have even less right to show cowardice than men" (it was a favorite theme with her), "because they have to be the mothers of men, and the maternal strain is nearly always the dominant—or so Jim Thorpe says—But I don't believe that you, at least, will ever go very far away from your mother!"

She was thinking, of course, of Philip.

Jacqueline was rather pale. Her eyes dropped. "I'm not so sure. I've been thinking lately—Mummy, could I possibly go to New York? I'm so tired of home!"

Kate was troubled. This restlessness was the first indication she had noticed that the affair with Channing might have left its effect. But she said, as if the girl's wish were very natural, "To New York? That's not impossible. It's a long time since I have been out of the State myself, and I've been thinking for some time of taking you and Jemmy for a trip. Suppose we go to New York, all three of us, and buy Jemmy's trousseau? And we'll take Philip, too—it's always pleasant to have a man about. We'll have a regular old orgy of theaters and shops and galleries, such as I used to have sometimes with my father and mother, years ago. Would that please you?"

"Oh, it would be wonderful! But—" the girl crimsoned, "that is not quite what I meant, Mummy darling. When I go to New York, I want to stay. For years."

"Years! But why?"

"To study music. To begin my career."

Kate sat down in the nearest chair. Since childhood Jacqueline had been talking at intervals about this career of hers, an ambition varying in scope from journalism to, more latterly, the operatic stage. It was a favorite family joke, Jacqueline's career. And here it stared her suddenly in the face, no longer a joke. Jacqueline was in earnest.

She watched her mother's face anxiously. "I know it would be horribly expensive, lessons and all. But we can afford to be expensive, can't we?"

Kate's lips set. "We can, but we won't. Not in the matter of careers. What put this into your head, my girl?"

"It's always been there, I think. But you remember Mr. Channing spoke to you—"

"Ah, yes, Mr. Channing! I do remember; but that is hardly a recommendation that appeals to me," said Kate, drily.

"Mr. Channing has heard all the great singers of the world, and knows them, too." Jacqueline spoke with a firmness new to her. "And if he says I have a voice, I have. I ought to waste no more time, Mother."

"I also have a 'voice,' my dear, and I've found it extremely useful without having recourse to a career."

"How—useful!"

"Singing lullabies to my children, for one thing. It did not seem to me a waste of time—No, no, my girlie, no stage women in this family! We've been conspicuous enough without that."

"Would you really mind so very much?" asked Jacqueline, wistfully.

"So much," answered her mother, smiling but grave, "that I should lock you into the cellar on a bread-and-water diet, at the first hint of such a thing! Understand me, I forbid it absolutely. You may put this nonsense out of your head."

Kate had rarely occasion to speak to her children in such a tone, and Jacqueline looked at her, rather frightened. But she said nothing.

"Why, Jacqueline, little daughter, why should you spend your youth and your loveliness on a public that will cast you aside like an old glove when it is worn out? No, no, there's a larger purpose for you in life than any mere career. Careers are for the women who miss the other things, and who use in default the best they have. Fame, bah! It does not outlast a generation—or if it does, you will not know it. What you have to give will outlast many generations, will never die, will become part of the muscle and sinew and back-bone of your nation. Sons! Big, clean, lusty, well-born children!—Why, don't you suppose you and my clever Jemima—yes, and even my little crippled Katharine—were better gifts for me to bring the world than a mere passing pleasure in my voice?—Ah, Jacky, there's just one career open to women like you and me. You know very well what it is."

The girl was oddly stirred. When her mother spoke like this, she always thought, for some reason, of a statue she had never seen, a great bronze Liberty, with torch aloft, lighting into her safe harbor the ships of all the world.

But she said, after a moment, "You put me on a par with Mag Henderson, Mother. Has she fulfilled the purpose of her creation, then?"

Kate was startled anew. Jacqueline in the rôle of thinker was unexpected. But she answered, honestly as always, "I believe she has. Nature often makes use of unworthy vessels to accomplish her own ends—poor little vessels! Mag is waste, perhaps. Her child will not be waste.—I'll see to that. So the balance of economy is kept.—But you are no unworthy vessel, Jacqueline, thank God!"

The girl went to the window and stood looking out, over the garden that merged into a pasture, and so down gradually into the ravine where the ruined slave-house stood.

"Suppose," she asked in a muffled voice, "suppose I couldn't marry? What then?"

Kate believed she understood. The affair with Channing had left more of a hurt than she had realized. Jacqueline, at seventeen, doubtless considered herself a blighted being.—She controlled the smile that twitched at her lips, and said cheerfully, "Then you will just have to be a prop for my declining years. You won't begrudge me a prop, dear? Surely you don't want to go away from me?"

The unconscious emphasis on the pronoun went to Jacqueline's heart. She remembered the day Jemima had shut them out into the world of people who were not Kildares, she and her mother together....

She came back at a run, and plumped herself down on Kate's knees, great girl that she was, hiding her face in that sheltering breast, holding her mother tight, tight, as if she could never let her go.

Kate returned the embrace with interest. She, too, remembered.

"It will be something bigger than a career that takes you away from your mother!" she whispered.

"Something bigger than a career," echoed Jacqueline, clinging closer.

Kate broached the subject of the New York trip at supper that night, but met with no encouragement whatever from her elder daughter, somewhat to her surprise.

"What is the use of buying an expensive trousseau? Mag sews quite well enough, and anyway I have more clothes now than I know what to do with," she argued practically. "If you think I haven't enough lingerie and all that, I can take some of Jacky's. It seems rather mean to desert a man just as soon as you get engaged to him. Besides, James and I shall be going to New York next month, on our wedding-trip."

"Next month?" cried Kate.

"Why, yes, Mother. There's no use putting it off, I think. James has been alone so many years; and he certainly needs some one to look after him. If you could see the pile of perfectly good socks in his closet that only need a little darning!" She spoke unsentimentally as ever; but there was a tone in her voice that made her mother give her hand a little squeeze.

"Very well, dear. You shall be married to-morrow, if you like."

"To-morrow is a little soon. Suppose we say three weeks from to-day?"

Kate gasped, but consented.

Preparations for the wedding went on apace at Storm, though it was to be a very quiet affair, not the fashionable ceremony, with bridesmaids and champagne, for which Jemima's heart privately yearned.

"I don't know any girls well enough to ask them to be bridesmaids," she explained wistfully to her fiance, who made a mental note to supply her with young women friends hereafter, if he had to hire them.

Nevertheless, it was something of a ceremony. The Madam did not have a daughter married every day. For days beforehand the negroes were busy indoors and out, cleaning, painting and whitewashing, exhibiting a tendency to burst into syncopated strains of Lohengrin whenever Jemima or the Professor came into view. The kitchen chimney belched forth smoke like a factory; for though no invitations were sent out, it was inevitable that the countryside, white and black, would arrive to pay its respects to the newly wedded, and Big Liza, with an able corps of assistants, was preparing to welcome them in truly feudal fashion.

Gifts began to arrive, silver and glass and china from friends of the Professor and business connections of Mrs. Kildare. A magnificent service of plate came from Jemima's great-aunt, for whom she was named. ("We must make friends with Aunt Jemima, James," was the bride's thoughtful comment on the arrival of this present.) Philip could not afford to buy a handsome enough gift, and so parted with the bronze candelabra which Farwell had so covetously admired; a sacrifice which did much to break down the hauteur of the bride's recent manner with him. She knew how well he loved his few Lares and Penates.

There were other presentations of less conventional nature. These Professor Thorpe, whom the panting Ark conveyed nightly from the university to Storm and back again, eyed with a mixture of interest and dismay.

"This suckling pig, now," he murmured. "How are we to accommodate him in a city apartment, Jemima? And that highly decorative rooster—I fear we shall have some difficulty in persuading my janitor to accept him as an inmate. Do you suppose all your mother's tenants will feel called upon to supply us with livestock?"

"Oh, no, Goddy! Look at this crazy quilt," chuckled Jacqueline, busily unwrapping parcels, "It is made of the Sunday dresses of all Mrs. Sykes' friends and relations. She thought it might remind Jemmy of home. It will. Oh, it will! You've only to look at it and you'll see the entire congregation nodding over one of Phil's sermons!" She made a little face at the cleric, who responded by rumpling her hair. "Then the Housewives' League mother organized has crocheted enough perfectly hideous lace for all the sheets and things. Your bed-linen is going to bristle with it like a porcupine."

"It's very good of them," said Jemima, reprovingly. "As for the livestock, James, we can eat it.—Look at this barrel of potatoes, and these home-cured hams, and all the pickle. Stop laughing at my friends!"

Thorpe murmured meek apologies.

The evening before the wedding, Big Liza came striding into the hall where the family sat assembled, bearing aloft a large round object wrapped in newspaper.

"Huh! Look at what dat 'ooman Mahaly had the owdaciosity to bring fo' a bridal gif'!" she snorted, swelling with indignation. "Reck'n she 'lows dey ain't nary a cook at Sto'm good enough to make no bride-cake. Allus was a biggity, uppity piece, dat Mahaly!"

She placed it on a table, and waddled scornfully out again.

The professor undid the wrappings in a somewhat gingerly manner. There was an element of the unexpected about his wedding-gifts which intrigued curiosity. This time he gave a rather startled exclamation, blushed and backed away.

It was a mammoth white cake, which bore, besides certain garlands and other decorations of a distinctly Cubist tendency, the legend done in silver candies: For the Baby.

"D-dear me!" murmured the professor, hastily shrouding it once more in its wrappings.

"That means Jemima," smiled Kate. "To Mahaly, Jemmy has always been 'The Baby.' She nursed her, you know."

"Nursed me—that mulatto woman who lives in the white people's neighborhood? I never knew that," said the girl. "How strange! She never comes here with the other old servants, even at Christmas time, and I've never gone to see her. Why was I not told?"

Kate did not answer.

"Did you have to dismiss her, Mother—was it that? Was she dishonest, or something of the sort?"

"No," said Kate, with an odd reluctance. "She was a very good servant in every way, and perfectly devoted to you and to little Katharine."

Jemima looked at her in surprise. It was very unlike the Madam to lose touch with any creature, human or otherwise, who had once faithfully served her. She waited for an explanation.

"Mahaly has never come to Storm," said Kate in a low voice, "since your father's death. She was his servant for many years before I came here."

"Oh!" said Jemima. The negress had evidently been one of her father's loyal supporters, resenting what she must have seen at Storm. "I see! In that case, Mother, I should like to do something for her. People who are faithful to my father—"

There was an uncomfortable stir in the room.

"Mahaly has been given the cottage in which she lives, as a present from you and little Katharine," interrupted Kate.

"I am glad of that," said the girl with a certain stateliness. "I was going to say that people who are faithful to my father must never be forgotten by his children."

"Nor by his wife," said Kate, with quiet dignity....

Despite the preoccupation of the wedding, Kate did not make the mistake of neglecting Jacqueline's affairs. She had had her warning. Moreover, though she would have denied it even to herself, the younger girl had come to occupy a far larger share of her heart than had even been given to the self-reliant Jemima. She had felt, lately (and the thought frightened her) that in watching Jacqueline she was watching her own youth over again. What possibilities lay in the girl's nature for strength and weakness, for hot-headed folly, for sacrifice and passion and unselfish service, she knew as do those who have been the victims of such natures themselves. Jacqueline, if it were in human possibility to compass it, should profit by her mother's bitter mistakes.

She redoubled her vigilance on learning that Channing had after all not left the vicinity. Philip had passed him one day in one of Farwell's machines, and hastened to report the encounter at Storm.

"Perhaps he has come back for your wedding," she said thoughtfully to Thorpe.

The Professor's lips closed grimly. "He is not invited to my wedding. J. Percival and I have, so to speak, severed diplomatic relations. Look out for him, Kate!"

Philip, too, was not so certain as she that Channing was keeping to his promise with regard to Jacqueline.

But the girl was under her mother's eye all day long, excited as Jemima herself over the preparations, stitching with unwonted diligence on the bridal finery, running errands, seeing visitors, happy and busy and asking nothing better than to be with Kate or her sister whatever they were about. It was a little touching to both, as if the madcap girl had suddenly realized that the old companionship of home was about to be broken up, and wanted to have as much of it as possible.

There was no hour in the full days when she might have seen Channing, even had she wished. And Jemima continued to watch her mail with a hawk's eye.

Channing's word of honor not to communicate with the girl would have seemed, in itself, an insufficient safeguard to Kate, had not her knowledge of men reassured her. She believed that her daughter was not the type to arouse more than a passing interest in such a man as Channing. Her beauty, her flattered response to his attentions, her fresh, unsophisticated charm of gaiety, might well appeal to him for a time, adding the fillip of the unaccustomed to a jaded palate. But it was an appeal that must be constantly renewed, that would not outlast any continued absence. She believed that Channing, while he would accept with eagerness whatever good thing came to his hand, was too indolent and too self-centered to overcome many obstacles in the pursuit of a fancy.

Jacqueline herself was reassuring, too. Her manner of receiving the news of Channing's perfidy had showed her no stranger to the Kildare pride. She seemed to regard the affair as a closed incident.

"Do you think," said Kate proudly to Philip, "that my daughter would care to have anything to do with the man, now that she knows his utter unworthiness?"

"It is just possible that she was attracted to Channing by other qualities than worthiness," commented Philip. "Weakness, for instance. Women have been attracted by weakness before this."

"Phil, Phil," Kate laughed, "you are an 'elderly young man,' as Jacky says! Almost as elderly and wise as our Jemima. Stop croaking and come and see the new wedding garments Mag is putting on my old chairs."

She flung an affectionate arm about him, and led him indoors, his heart beating too hard and suddenly to make further speech possible just then.—Yet there was much he wished to say, and not about Jacqueline. These wedding preparations stirred certain yearnings in his breast, certain eager hopes. It seemed to him that his lady was warmer lately, more approachable, more present, somehow. Was she, too, stirred by all this thought and talk of marriage? It was hard to wait patiently. Yet he was too good a horseman to rush his fences.

Mag on her knees, her mouth full of pins, was cleverly fitting slips of gay-flowered cretonne over the masculine chairs and sofas, assisted, or at least not hindered, by Jacqueline.

"The old hall won't know itself, will it?" cried the latter, waving them a welcome. "All got up in ruffles and things, looking as frivolous as the lion in the circus with a bow on his tail!"

She ran after her disappearing mother with some question, and Philip, finding himself alone with Mag, was reminded of a certain duty he had to perform.

He stood a moment gazing down at her, she so intent upon her labors that she did not notice he was there. As always, the pathos of the girl moved him strongly; so young she was to be already one of life's failures, so helplessly a victim of early environment. Believed from care and hardship, well-fed and well-clothed and sheltered, she had grown sleek and soft and pretty as a petted kitten, and there should have been a look of content about her which he missed. Her mouth drooped a little, and now and then a visible shadow crossed her face.

He sighed. Rumor was once again busy with the name of Mag Henderson. Sometimes Philip wearied of his job as the neighborhood's spiritual policeman.

He asked gently: "Mag, you're not happy here at Storm?"

She looked up with a start. "Why—I didn't know no one was there! Why, yes, sir. They're real good to me and baby here."

"And you like your work, don't you?"

Again he noticed the shadow on her face. "I reckon so—as well as I'd like any work." People were always frank with Philip. "A gal gits kind o' tired of workin' all the time, though. I make dresses and trim hats for most of the ladies round about, now, and they pay me good, too. But...."

"But it's all work and no play, eh?"

"That's it," she said, grateful for his understanding. "I don't never have no fun. I ain't got no gen'leman friends, nor nothing. What's the use of havin' good clothes, and lookin' pretty and all, ef you don't get to go somewhere so that folks kin see you? I'm tired of bein' looked down on," she complained fretfully. "I ain't got a friend on this place 'cep'n Miss Jacky, and now she—"

Mag stopped short. Philip wondered what she had been about to say, but he was too good a confessor to force confidences.

"You've always got the Madam," he said.

"Yes, but she don't care nothing about me. She's kind enough, but so's she kind to any cur dog that comes along. What am I to her?"

"You've got your baby, Mag."

But the childish, fretful face did not soften. "Babies are more trouble than company to a person. Besides, she likes Miss Jacky now bettern't her own mammy. She cries to go to her from me.—It's fun I want, like other gals. Everybody, it seems like, has fun but me, even the niggers. Parties, and picnics, and weddin's and all—Oh, my, but don't I wisht I was Miss Jemmy!"

Evidently the wedding preparations had stirred longings in more hearts than Philip's.

"Even if she is marryin' an old man an' a cast-off beau of her ma's, look at the ring he give her! A di'mon' big as my thumb-nail. She let me put it on my finger once, and it looked grand. Oh, my, I'd do 'most anything for a ring like that!"

"Would you, really, Mag?" he asked curiously, wondering at the fascination shining bits of stone possess for women far more civilized than this little savage. "Do you think a diamond ring would make you any happier?"

"In co'se it would," she said, impatiently.

"Why?"

"Oh, I dunno—it would make me look prettier, I expect."

He said, kindly: "You do not need to look any prettier. You are quite pretty enough, as it is."

Her whole expression changed. She gave him a conscious upward glance. "Am I? Why, Mr. Philip, I never thought a preacher'd notice how a gal looked!"

It told him all and more than he wanted to know. He continued to meet her gaze with grave eyes, and after a moment her own dropped.

"'T ain't much use bein' pretty round here," she muttered. "The city's the place for pretty gals."

"Who told you that? The drummer I saw you talking with behind the village store a few days ago?"

She tossed her head. "Well, what if it was? I got the right to pass the time o' day with a fellow, ain't I? You'd suppose I was in prison!"

Philip sought out his lady again with a troubled heart. "Sorry to croak any more at this busy time, but Mag will bear watching. She's been seen about with men once or twice lately."

Kate sighed with exasperation. "'Give a dog a bad name.' I shall have to acquire the hundred eyes of Argus to keep up with my household nowadays, it seems!"

It was not the first warning that had come to her about her protégée. Big Liza, for years her confidential friend and ally, had said to her one day: "Dat white gal ain't keerin' so much about de chile no mo', Miss Kate. She's allus a-leavin' her with me, ef Miss Jacky ain't got her. Gawd He knows I ain't complainin' about havin' a chile aroun', seein' as how I done raise nine of my own, right heah under ma kitchen stove, like so many little puppy-dawgs. But dey wuz cullud chillun, an' dat's diffunt. Is dishyer hot kitchen any place to raise up a w'ite chile in? Now I ax you! 'Pears to me like dat gal don' keer for nothin' no mo' but traipsin' down to de sto' an' gallivantin' roun' de roads wid her fine clo'es on. She ain't no better'n a yaller nigger gal!"

Kate asked reluctantly (she did not take kindly to spying), "Have you ever seen her with men, Liza?"

The black woman compressed her lips. "No'm, Miss Kate, I ain't nebber prezackly seed 'em—but laws, honey, dat kin' ob goin's-on don't aim to be seed!"

Now that she had a more definite rumor to go by, Kate said sorrowfully to Philip, "You told me it was a mistake to bring her here in the first place. It seems to me I make a great many mistakes!" She sighed again.

"At least," said he, "they are the sort of mistakes that will get you into heaven."

She laughed mirthlessly. "You always talk, you clergymen, as if you had special advices from heaven in your vest-pockets!"

But she was comforted, nevertheless. She would have found it hard to do without Philip's steady adulation.

The night after the wedding proved to be for Kate Kildare one of the nuits blanches that were becoming common with her in the past few weeks. For many years the cultivated habit of serenity had carried her through whatever crises came into her life, following her days of unremitting labor with nights of blessed oblivion. But lately she found herself quite often waking just before daylight, with that feeling of oppression, that blank sense of apprehension, that is the peculiar property of "the darkest hour."

This night she occupied her brain as soothingly as possible with details of the wedding; smiling to remember the unaccustomed frivolity of the old hall, which the negroes had decorated with flowers and ribbons placed in all likely and unlikely places. Every antler sported its bow of white; the various guns which hung along the walls, as they had hung in the days of Basil's grandfather, each trailed a garland of blossoms; even the stuffed racehorse was not forgotten, so that he appeared to be running his final race with Death while incongruously munching roses.

Jacqueline as bridesmaid was, oddly enough, the only one of the wedding-party who seemed in the least upset. She was white as a sheet and trembling visibly, and when Philip greeted Jemima formally as "Mrs. Thorpe," she suddenly burst into tears, and refused to be comforted.

"He's so old!" she sobbed on her mother's shoulder. "Oh, poor Blossom! He's so old!"

Yet the bridegroom had looked to Kate's eyes amazingly young; and as he stood gazing down at the exquisite little white-clad figure beside him, there was such an expression of pride in his face, of incredulous, reverent happiness, that it was all his new mother-in-law could do to keep from kissing him before the ceremony was over.

Jemima herself was as calm as might have been expected; perhaps calmer. At the critical moment, when Philip's grave voice was beginning: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God"—the bride was heard to murmur to her attendant, "Jacky, pull my train out straight." Thereafter, she fixed her eye upon a certain flintlock rifle over the mantel-piece, which had won the first Kentucky Kildare his way into the virgin wilderness, and went through the ceremony with the aplomb of a general directing his forces into battle. The mother wondered what the girl was thinking of, staring so fixedly at the old rifle. Perhaps she was vowing to be worthy of it in the new wilderness she was about to tread.

Afterwards for an hour or so Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe had graciously received the uninvited guests of both colors who had come "to see the bride off." Then the two sisters went upstairs together to change into the going-away dress; and Kate, presently following, found Jemima alone.

"I thought you would come, Mother. That's why I sent Jacky away."

Kate, a little tremulous herself, had counted upon the bride's composure to carry the day; but behold! it was suddenly a thing of the past. She ducked her head and ran into her mother's arms as if she were trying to hide from something, breathless, panic-stricken; and Kate soothed her silently with tender hands.

Presently Jemima whispered in a queer little voice, "Mother? Now that we are both married women, tell me—Was my father—was my father good to you?"

"My little girl! You need never worry about Jim's being good to you."

"Oh, Jim—of course!—I'm not thinking of him, I'm thinking of you. If—if my father was not good to you, I can understand—I see—"

Then Kate realized what she was trying to say. This cold, proud child of hers was willing to give up her pride in her father, if so be she might hold fast again to the old faith in her mother.

The temptation was great, but Kate put it from her. She could not rob dead Basil of his child's respect.

"You must never blame your father, dear, for any weakness of mine," she said, steadily.

But the girl still clung to her, whispering another strange thing. "Often, when I am half awake, I remember some one—Not you, Mother. Some one with a deep laugh, whose coat feels smooth on my cheek—who used to toss me up in the air, and play with me, and pet me if I was frightened. I always want to cry when he goes.—Is that my father, Mother?"

A pulse beat thickly in Kate's throat. She had some difficulty in answering. "Perhaps. Who knows? A baby's dreams, dear. But cling to them, cling to them—"

She knew very well it was not Jemima's father, but the man who should have been her father, Jacques Benoix. So, after all, the first loves of life are not forgotten, even by Jemimas....

Lying there, despite the depressing hour, content stole over her; a feeling that all was well with her elder child, at least.

She turned her thoughts to Jacqueline. There, too, things were going better. None of Philip's growing interest and tenderness for his little playmate had escaped her notice. Motherwise, she exaggerated these into symptoms of greater import. Blunderer that she was, she had at least managed to bring the child safe through the perils of a first passion, that rock upon which so many young lives wreck, even as hers had wrecked. In the rebound from the affair with Channing, the girl could not fail to appreciate the superior charm of Jacques' big and simple son, who was so much like Jacques himself. She was sure that Jacqueline already loved Philip without suspecting it. Women ere this have loved two men at once.

Then, as suddenly as pain that has been waiting for the first motion on the part of its victim to pounce, the apprehension she had been fighting came back upon her, twofold.—Was she so certain? And had she not in her blundering life been certain of too many things? That she would be a true wife to Basil Kildare, for instance; that she could justify Jacques before the world; that at least she might atone to him for all he had lost through her. And in each of these things she had been wrong. She, with all her boast of efficiency, she the successful Mrs. Kildare of Storm, what was she in the end but a failure—a wife whose husband had not trusted her, a woman who had ruined her lover's life, a mother whose daughter married without love, to get away from her?

She wondered, as at all such moments, what was the purpose for which she had been created; or whether there had indeed been a purpose. This humanity that takes itself so seriously, may it be after all only a superior sort of spider-egg, hatching out in due season, spinning busy webs for the world to brush away, laying other eggs, and so on, ad infinitum? Perhaps the God of simple people, such as her mother and Philip Benoix and Brother Bates, the God upon whom she herself called at times because of the force of early habit—perhaps He was only life-principle—the warmth of the sun, for instance—an impersonal, intangible something which started the universe as one winds a clock, and left it to go on ticking till the mechanism runs down.... Good or bad, wise or foolish—what difference? Spin our webs no matter how carefully, they are only gossamer, visible for a moment with the dew or the frost upon them and then—vanished. Human and spider alike, unnoted, innumerable, self-perpetuating....

Poor Kate Kildare! When natures such as hers lose their self-reliance, life becomes as unsubstantial as an opium dream. If they cannot count upon themselves, what then may they count upon?

She jumped out of bed, and went to the window, where she stood for a while in the cold starlight, letting the wind blow in across her feverish face. She wrapped blankets around her, and sat listening to the sounds of the sleeping country; an owl mournfully hooting, a premature cock crowing lustily, the drowsy whickering of horses stirring in their stalls; for it was two o'clock, and the countryside was beginning to dream of day. She stayed for a long while brooding over the land she loved, as over a sleeping child. Always the great out-of-doors had its balm for her....

Suddenly she sat erect. In the shadows back of the stables something had moved. One of the dogs, perhaps? Then out into the starlight, crossing rapidly toward the house, flitted the slight figure of a girl, with several of the dogs leaping and gamboling about her in a silence that showed her to be no stranger. She was shrouded in a long hooded cape, and passed out of Kate's range too quickly lo be recognizable.

"Now which of the wenches was that?" thought Kate, frowning. The amorous adventures of their black servants have come to be accepted by Southern housekeepers with unenquiring philosophy. "But why was she coming to the house at this hour?" she wondered further.

The negroes had their quarters well at the back, and no one slept in the "great house" with Kate and her daughters, except the housewoman, Ella, too elderly for midnight adventure, and Mag Henderson, who with her baby occupied a room in the guest-wing, under the Madam's immediate supervision.

She listened acutely. Her bedroom door rattled a little in the draught of another door which opened and closed. She heard an unmistakable creaking of the back stairs that led to a hall behind her room and the girls' rooms, and which also led to the guest-wing.

"It's Mag!" she thought.

In the morning, anxious and distressed, she hurried to consult Philip. He shrugged. "I'm not surprised, but I honestly don't know how to advise you, Miss Kate. I never wanted you to take her to Storm, but now that she's there, I suppose only the devil himself would get her away from you."

"It looks as if the devil were going to have a try at it," she commented, grimly.

"Are you perfectly sure it was Mag?"

"No, I'm not. It was too dark to see her face, and she was wrapped in a big cape.—Now that I come to think of it, it was the cape we always keep hanging by the side door for whoever happens to be going out. None of the negroes would dare to put that on. So it must have been Mag."

"At least we must be definitely sure before we say anything to her. It is a delicate matter. Sometimes a lack of trust at the wrong moment.—Be very sure, Miss Kate!"

"I'll watch to-night. Perhaps the poor little fool will try to slip off again."

Midnight found the Madam seated at her dark window, dressed and fully prepared for any emergency—except that she happened to be asleep. Black coffee had not been sufficient to offset the treacherously soothing effect of a rain-laden breeze full of soft earth-odors, that blew across her eyelids. She might have slept there placidly till morning, had not a clap of thunder awakened her with a start.

The night had become very tense and still. The trees seemed to hold themselves rigid, as if they listened for something. Now and then, lightning stabbed viciously through the dark. Beneath her the old house creaked, bracing itself once more to meet the onslaught of its life-long enemy, the wind. Far away across the plateau came a faint rushing sound, that grew in volume rapidly. Once again the thunder boomed.

Kate rose, yawning. "No amorous adventures for Mag to-night, that's certain! It's going to be the first big storm of the season. There's bite as well as bark in that sky."

But at the moment, a flash of lightning showed her a slight girl's figure running, not toward, but away from the house.

Kate was startled. "It's serious then, poor silly creature, if she goes out on a night like this!" For Mag had even more than the usual cowardice of her class. Thunder-storms reduced her to abject terror.

For a moment Kate thought of following, before she realized the folly of the idea. How could she hope to catch so fleet a pair of heels, already lost in the darkness? Then a faint cry came to her, the sound of a child wailing forlornly.

She slipped out into the passage, careful not to wake Jacqueline. Whatever was to be done with Mag, one duty lay plain before her—to comfort the deserted baby.

She opened Mag's door without knocking.—The baby was not deserted. Mag herself stood at the window in her nightdress, cringing from the lightning, and wringing her hands and weeping. The baby wept in sympathy.

When she saw who had entered, Mag ran forward with a terrified cry, and fell on her knees, clinging to Kate's skirts as a dog crouches against its master to escape a beating.

"'T ain't my fault, 't ain't my fault! I done begged her not to go to-night, I done prayed her, Miss Kate! Oh, oh, look at that lightnin'! She'll be kilt!"

"What are you talking about? Pull yourself together, Mag!" Even then the truth did not dawn on Kate. She thought she must have been the victim of some optical illusion. Mag had to tell her in so many words.

"Miss Jacky's gone to meet her fella again, and I know she's goin' to git kilt!"

Kate reeled against the wall. "Again?" she whispered.

"I done begged her not to, no more. I knowed he'd git her into trouble if she kep' it up.—Oh, I helped 'em, and toted notes for 'em, an' all, 'cause I liked to see her so happy—but I didn't never think it would come to this! I'd 'a' tol' you if I dared, Miss Kate, but I dassent, I dassent. She liked me—she kissed me once. Oh, oh, and now she's gone!"

Kate forced her stiff lips into speech. "This—has been going on for some time?"

"Yes'm, right smart. Ever since he was sick here. I took'n him a letter from her the day he went away."

Even in that moment, Kate's whirling brain did Channing justice. He had kept his word, the letter of it, at least. He had not sought Jacqueline. It was she who had sought him.

She was getting back her breath. "Now," she said, "where shall I find them?"

Mag's wails broke forth anew. "I dunno! Reckon it's too late. Oh, my Lordy! I took'n her bag to the Ruin before supper, and he was to come for her there at midnight. Reckon it's past that now. They've done gone!"

"Gone?" The word was a gasping cry. "Gone—where?"

"I dunno. The city, I reckon, or wherever he lives at.—Oh, my Gawd, lissen at that!" The wind struck the house a great buffet, and the thunder was rattling steadily as artillery now.

Kate's knees refused to support her. She held herself upright by clinging to the bed.

The sight of the Madam thus stricken and speechless sobered Mag out of her own fears. She bethought herself suddenly of the letter Jacqueline had left for her mother.

"Here! Maybe it says in the letter where she's gone at. Don't look that way, Miss Kate! I wa'n't to give you the letter till mornin', but here it is. You kin have it now, see, Miss Kate!"