It was so rarely that the Madam overslept herself that her servants had no precedent to follow in the matter. The housewoman, who finally entered on tiptoe to remove the placidly protesting Kitty, reported the Madam sleeping "like a daid pusson, and mighty peaked-lookin' in the face." So it was decided not to disturb her; and the morning was well advanced before Kate reached the Rectory, where her thoughts had been hovering since her first waking moment.

The counsels of the night had taught her a new humility. She came to Jacqueline as a suppliant, begging to be forgiven not only for her moment of cruel anger but for her stupid and bungling interference in her child's life. Nothing was very clear in her mind except that Philip must be told the truth, and that, whatever happened, she and her child would bear it together.

She was disappointed to find that both Jacqueline and Philip were out, Jacqueline having driven away soon after Philip left the house.

"Driven? She was not riding?" asked Kate in some surprise. Jacqueline, like her mother, rarely used a vehicle if a saddle-horse was at hand.

"She tooken de buggy, an' she tooken Lige, too," explained Ella. "No'm, I dunno whar she went at, kase I wa'n't here when dey lef', but I reckon she'll be gone a right smart while, 'cause she lef' me word jes what I was to feed dat puppy. As ef a pusson raised at Sto'm wouldn't know how to take keer of puppy-dawgs!" She exchanged with her former mistress a smile of indulgent amusement. "I 'lows she's goin' to tek her dinner with you-all like she ginally does, ain't she?"

Kate doubted it, after what had passed; but she went back to her house and waited, hopefully.

At about the dinner-hour she was called to the telephone, and for a moment failed to recognize Philip's voice over the wire. It sounded unnatural.

"Is Jacqueline there?"

"Why, no. Not yet. Is she coming?"

"I—I don't know. Look here!—don't worry, but she's been gone for some hours, and she 's taken a trunk with her."

"A trunk?" cried Kate.

"Yes. Do you know anything about it? Has she spoken to you of making a visit, or anything?" He repeated his question, patiently; but Kate could not find her voice to answer. A premonition of disaster struck her dumb.

"You're not to worry," said Philip again. "Lige drove her over to the trolley-line, and he should be back soon. I'll telephone you what he has to say."

But Kate could not wait. She ran out to the stables and saddled a horse with her own hands, impatiently pushing aside the slower negroes.

Halfway to the rectory she met Philip, in the Ark. He held out to her an open letter.

"Lige brought it back to me. It's from Jacqueline. Read it," he said, dully.

Seated upon a restive horse that backed and filled nervously about the puffing engine, the paper fluttering in her fingers, Kate read aloud Jacqueline's farewell to her husband, only half grasping its meaning:

Kate looked up here. "Did you know?" she asked.

He nodded, without speaking.

Kate's head drooped over the letter. "And her mother didn't," she thought.

Kate gasped; but the courage of it brought up her drooping head again.

The two stared at each other for a moment without a word. Then Philip said hoarsely, "She means Channing, of course!"

"No, no!" muttered the mother, shrinking, fighting against her own conviction. "She loves you too much for that. It is you she loves, now. She couldn't! She must have gone to Jemima. Oh, I am sure she has gone to Jemima! Come, we'll telegraph."

She started for the Rectory at a gallop, her thoughts as usual translating themselves into action. Over the telephone she dictated a long wire to Jemima, carefully worded so that the curiosity of a country telegraph operator should not be aroused. Her brain never worked better than in an emergency.

"Now," she said briskly, turning to the dazed and silent Philip, "come up and show me what you want in your bag."

"Where am I to go?" he asked vaguely.

"I'll tell you as soon as I hear from Jemima. But there is no time to waste."

He stood quite idle in the little rose and white bower he had prepared for his bride, watching Kate hurrying about his own room beyond, packing necessities into his worn old leather satchel, somewhat hampered by the activities of Jacqueline's puppy, who made constant playful lunges at her feet.

He could not quite realize what had happened—that Jacqueline, his playmate, his little friend, his wife, had gone out of the safe haven of his home back to the man who had betrayed and deserted her. It seemed like a hideous dream from which he must soon awake. How had he failed her? What desperate unhappiness must have hidden itself in this pretty white room where he had hoped she might be happy!

At intervals during the night before, he had waked to hear her softly stirring about, and wondered why she did not come to him as usual, to be soothed into drowsiness. Once he had almost broken his custom and gone in to her, feeling that she had need of him. How he wished now that he had followed this impulse! Yes, and many another like it....

Looking about, he noticed that her glass lamp was quite empty of oil, and that her darning basket stood beside it, full to overflowing with neatly darned and rolled socks of his own. So that was how she had spent the night, doing her best to leave him comfortable! A great lump rose in his throat. He saw, too, that both his own photograph and that of her mother were gone. She had taken them with her.

His daze began to break. He remembered phrases in Jacqueline's letter: "I didn't mean to be dishonorable ... I didn't know mother asked you to marry me ... I did him an injustice."

He went in to Kate, and demanded abruptly to know how this thing had come about.

It was a question she had been dreading, but she answered it fully and frankly, sparing herself not at all. He listened with an oddly judicial air, new in her experience of him. When she described her share in Channing's disappearance, he interrupted her quickly.

"You deceived her?"

"Yes. I know now that it was wrong."

He made no comment; but when she came to her confession to Jacqueline that it was she who had suggested their marriage and not Philip, he interrupted her again.

"Kate," he said slowly and incredulously, "you have been cruel!"

At any other time he would have noticed how her never-idle hands were shaking, the paleness of her lips, the dark shadow of pain in her eyes. But just then he was not thinking of her. He was thinking of Jacqueline.

He turned away abruptly, and looked over the portmanteau she had been packing. On the top lay the peppermint-striped silk shirt his wife had made for him. He saw it through a sudden blur of tears.

"There's one thing you've forgotten to pack," he muttered, and slipped into the bag something which Kate removed as soon as his back was turned. It was a pistol.

She was startled by this. "Perhaps I'd better go after Jacqueline myself," she suggested.

"It is my right. I am her husband," was the stern answer.

In an incredibly short space of time, the telephone rang with Jemima's return message.

"Thank Heaven for Jemima!" uttered her mother, turning from the telephone. "You'll have time to catch the evening train in Frankfort for New York, Philip. I'll meet you at the trolley station with money and all that."

He had not thought of money, would have started upon his quest with empty pockets. But it was characteristic of a new era that he accepted her financial help now quite simply, without demur, without thought, even, as he might have accepted it from his own mother.

The last thing he saw as the train pulled out of the station was Kate's face gazing up at him whitely from the platform, and he leaned far out of the window to promise, "I will not come back without her!"

But not then, nor until long afterwards, did he realize that for hours he had been with his dear lady at a time of great distress to her, without once realizing her presence; his thoughts yearning and his heart aching for another woman, for his wife, Jacqueline.

It was the moment of Kate's justification, of her triumph, had she but known it. But she did not know it.

She rode home slowly and yet more slowly through the twilight world, into which came presently a pale winter moon, serene and beautiful and mocking. There was no longer need of action, to stimulate her. She had reached the end of her strength.

The sensitive horse beneath her moved with increasing care, sedately and cautiously, as if he realized that he must be brains as well as feet for two. He was an experienced animal, and had known what it was to carry children on his back.

When he came to the front door of Storm, he paused of his own accord, and nickered anxiously.

So the servants found the Madam, and when they saw that she could not dismount, it was Big Liza who lifted her down in her strong old arms, as she had lifted her once before when she came, a bride, to Storm. She carried her in to a couch, moaning over her, "Oh, my lamb, my po' lamb; what is dey done to you now?"

The Madam could not answer.

Jemima Thorpe reached her mother's bedside two days later, greatly to the relief of the household, and of Dr. Jones.

"No, it does not seem to have been a stroke of any sort," explained that worthy and anxious man. "If Mrs. Kildare were an ordinary woman, I should call it hysteria, but she's not the neurotic type. It appears to be acute exhaustion, following, possibly, a shock of some kind." He looked at Jemima inquisitively, but without eliciting the information he sought. "At any rate, I am glad you have come, and I should suggest that Benoix and his wife be sent for. I hear they've gone off on a trip to New York?"

"To Europe," amended Jemima calmly. "They are now on the ocean, so they can't be sent for."

The doctor's eyes widened. Journeys to Europe were not usual among his patients. "Europe! Isn't that very sudden?"

"Very sudden," agreed Jemima. "Now shall we go in to mother?"

Perforce, he opened Mrs. Kildare's door, and announced with his cheeriest bedside manner, "Here's your girl home again."

The heavy eyes flew open. "Jacqueline!" she whispered.

But when she saw that it was not Jacqueline, the lids closed, and it seemed too much trouble to lift them again.

Jemima went on her knees, and laid a timid cheek on her mother's hand, that strong, beautiful hand lying so strangely limp now upon the counterpane. For the first time in her life she knew the feeling of utter helplessness. Her efficiency had failed her. In this emergency, she could not produce the thing her mother needed.

She wished with all her heart for her inefficient sister.