The old hall of Storm, with its memories of many a wild festivity, had never served as background for a prettier sight than Jemima and Jacqueline Kildare, coming shyly down the steps in their first ball-dresses, followed by a girl in gingham, equally young and pretty, with an anxious proprietary eye upon the hang and set of their fineries.

"Don't you hug 'em, please, Miss Kate," warned this girl as they descended. "Tulle musses so easy."

There was a long "A-ah!" of delight from the foot of the stairs, where the entire household was assembled, to the youngest pickaninny from the quarters. Jemima, exquisite and fragile as a snow-spirit in her white tulle, descended with the queenly stateliness that seems possible only to very small women; but Jacqueline, pink as a rose, flushed and dewy as if she had just been plucked from the garden, took the final steps with a run and landed in her mother's arms, despite Mag's warning.

"Aren't we perfectly grand?" she demanded. "Did you ever see anything as beautiful as us? See my gloves—almost as long as my arms! And my neck doesn't look so awfully bony, does it? There's lots of it, anyway, and it's white." She inflated her chest to full capacity, and looked around the circle for approval. Philip was there, as well as Professor Thorpe, who had come to fetch them in the Ark. Each had boxes in their hands.

"O-oh!" cried Jacqueline in delight. "Presents! What have you brought us?"

Professor Thorpe's boxes proved to contain flowers, and Philip presented to each of them a charming antique fan.

"Why, Reverend! How did you know girls used such things? It must be your French blood cropping out."

"I found them among mother's things," he explained, "and I knew she would like you to have them."

The girl sobered, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Jemima thanked him quietly, and laid her fan on a table. Philip and Kate exchanged a quick glance of understanding. It was evident that she meant to accept nothing from a Benoix. Young Jemima Kildare was of the stuff that makes the Kentucky blood-feuds possible.

There was an awkward pause, broken by Professor Thorpe. "We ought to be starting, I think. The Ark, while willing, has its little weaknesses, and it would not do for my guests to arrive and find neither host nor guests of honor present."

"Wait a moment," said Kate. "I, too, have presentations to make."

She produced two white velvet boxes bearing the name of a famous New York jeweler.

"Oh, what pretty little pinky-white beads!" cried Jacqueline, clasping hers about her throat and prancing to a mirror to observe the effect.

Jemima examined hers, and then looked quickly at her mother.

"Are they pearls?" she asked.

"Yes," said Kate. "Small ones, but a good investment, I think. Some day when you're older, girlies, perhaps you'll like to remember that your mother earned the money that bought them." She spoke to both of them, but it was to Jemima that her unconscious plea was made.

The older girl hesitated. Then she murmured, "Thank you, Mother. They are beautiful," and fastened them about her throat.

Kate gave a little sigh of relief, echoed by James Thorpe. Both had feared for a moment that she would refuse her mother's gift as she had refused Philip's.

"Come, come," said Professor Thorpe, "we really must start. Two hours' drive before us!"

Jacqueline clung to her mother. "Oh, if you were only coming too, Mummy! If you only were! Just say the word, and I won't go. Why, you'll be here alone, Mummy, darling, alone all night! You'll miss us dreadfully. What do I care about beaux and balls. I'd rather be with you than with any one else in the world—Almost any one else," she added honestly, flushing.

Kate laughed, and pushed her away. "Mag is looking daggers at us. We mustn't crumple that finery any more, precious.—Remember not to talk at the top of your lungs.—Have you got a pocket-handkerchief?"

She followed them out to the waiting automobile, smiling; but Philip noticed that her lips moved now and then silently, and he suspected that she was praying. He was right. It was the first time in their lives that her children had gone out of her own protection.

Mag shrouded them in long dust garments, tucked the robes about them solicitously, having first wrapped each white-slippered foot in tissue paper. The passionate interest of the girl in the pleasures of these other girls, pleasures she could never hope to share, struck two at least of the onlookers as a rather piteous thing.

"Good-by, good-by!" Jacqueline leaned out to throw last kisses impartially. "How I wish you were coming too, Mag and Mummy and Phil, you dears! I'll remember everything to tell you, compliments, and all, and dresses especially, Mag. I'll bring home all the goodies I can stuff into my pockets, too—oh, dear, there aren't any pockets to a ball dress! Never mind—I'll put 'em in Goddy's pockets. Good-by! When next you see us, we'll be real young ladies."

Kate stood gazing after them as wistfully as Mag, both following with their thoughts two happy young adventurers into a happy world forever closed to themselves. "You'd like to be going to a ball yourself, wouldn't you?" said she, to the girl beside her.

"Would I? Oh, my Gawd! Would I?" gasped Mag, and ran into the house.

The repressed intensity of the reply startled Mrs. Kildare. She looked at Philip. "Did you hear that? I wonder if the girl isn't happy here."

The past few months had done a great deal for Mag Henderson's body, whatever they had accomplished for her soul. Maternity had developed her lissome figure into beautiful lines; health, the result of care and good feeding, colored her lips and her cheeks and her pretty, shallow eyes; she had learned not only the trick of dressing becomingly, but of keeping her hair, her hands, and her feet as neat as those of a lady. Even her voice had lost something of its uncouth drawl, and its lazy softness had a charm of its own. She was very imitative.

For some time Philip had been aware that his lady's protÉgÉe was developing into an attractive young woman.

"You say she seems devoted to the child?" he asked thoughtfully.

"I think so, yes. She is always making clothes for the baby, and playing with it, and petting it—when Jacqueline will let her. But,"—Kate sighed faintly—"maternity isn't enough for all women, it seems."

It was such remarks as this that gave Philip his strong hope for the future.

But now he put himself aside to consider the problem of Mag Henderson. From the first he had foreseen that it was not a problem to be handled as simply as Kate thought to handle it. The psychological instinct of the priest was very strong in him—doubtless there had been many a good curÉ of souls among past generations of Benoixes, professing an older faith than his. In moments of clear vision that came to him he battled, as all thinkers must battle, with a great discouragement, a sense of helplessness that was almost terrifying. Of what use man's puny human endeavors against the forces of predestination arrayed against him—the forces of heredity, temperament, opportunity?

Mag Henderson cost him a wakeful night; and from her his thoughts kept straying oddly and unaccountably to Jacqueline, little Jacqueline, his playmate and pupil and chum, with her mischievous, daredevil impulses and her generous heart. He jerked his thoughts back angrily to poor Mag Henderson.

Why should he bracket the two together thus, the one a weed shooting up in a neglected fence corner, the other the loveliest and most lovingly tended blossom in a garden?—why, indeed, except that both were come, weed and flower alike, to the period of their blooming.