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!"

Only a few sentences of the long, incoherent screed in her hand penetrated to Kate's brain.

Kate uttered a hoarse exclamation, and dropped the letter. Her moment of helplessness had passed. She ran down stairs, two steps at a time, Mag at her heels. She jerked open the side door, and was almost driven from her feet by a great gust of driving rain. It was Mag who wrapped around her the first cloak that came to hand, the big, hooded cape Jacqueline had worn the night before, Kate stopped for nothing except to seize the rawhide whip which hung on its accustomed nail beside the door.

"What you goin' to do with that?" gasped Mag.

"My pistols are upstairs," muttered the other.

Mag stood at the door as long as she could, catching glimpses as the lightning flashed of a shrouded, hooded figure running with the wind, fast, fast, like some wild witch abroad upon the elements.