Jemima submitted to the embrace with a certain distaste. "Of course.

Don't be a goose, Mother dear! There'll never be any place I love as well as Storm--" (Kate winced again)--"or anybody I love as well as you.

But we've our position in the world to think of, we Kildares," she ended, with the stateliness of a d.u.c.h.ess.

"The world? Kentucky's a very small part of the world, dear."

"It happens to be the part we live in," said Jemima, unanswerably. "And ever since there was a Kentucky, there have been Kildares at the top of it. I do wish," she freed herself gently, "that you wouldn't always feel like embracing me when I've just done my hair! You're as bad as Jacky."

"Forgive me," said Kate humbly, releasing her. "So you can't be happy without 'society,' Jemmy? Parties don't always mean pleasure, my little girl."

"I know that--" Jemima spoke soberly. "I don't believe I'm going to have a very good time at parties. Jacqueline is. I don't know why--" her voice was quite impersonal. "I'm prettier than she is, really, and lots cleverer, but Jacky gets all the beaux. Even that author man, though you'd think.... Queer, isn't it?" She put her wistful question again: "Mother, do you think it pays to be clever?"

Kate, with a pang at the heart for this clear-eyed child of hers, answered as best she could this plaint of clever women since the world began. "Certainly it pays. Clever people usually get what they want."

"They get it, yes," mused the girl. "But it doesn't seem to come of its own accord. And things are nicer if they come of their own accord." She gave a faint sigh. "However, we must do what we can. And of course people don't go to parties, or give them, just to have a good time."

"No?" murmured Kate. "Why, then?"

"To make friends," explained the girl, patiently. "You see Jacky and I have to make our own friends."

Kate's eyes smote her suddenly with compunction, and she leaned her head against her mother's arm, quite impulsively for Jemima. "Not that I'm blaming you, Mummy. You've done the best you know how for us, and this is going to be my affair. It's all quite right for you to be a hermit, if you like. You're a widow, you've had your life. But Jacky and I aren't widows, and if we keep on this way, we'll never have a chance to be."

She was surprised by her mother's sudden chuckle. Jemima was never intentionally amusing.

"So," she finished, "Professor Jim is going to help us all he can."

"What! Jim Thorpe to the rescue again?" Kate could not accustom herself to the thought of this shy, awkward, scholarly man, the least considered of her girlhood adorers, in the role of social sponsor to her children.

"I asked him," explained Jemima, "whether he did not know all the worth while people in Lexington and thereabouts, and he said he did. So he is going to see that they invite us to their b.a.l.l.s and things. Of course, we shall have to do our share, too. And then," she added with a hesitating glance, "I thought perhaps we might go to New York some day, and visit our father's aunt Jemima."

"That is an idea you may put out of your head at once," said Kate, quietly. "Your father's aunt and I are not on friendly terms."

"I know. I've often wondered why." She paused, but Kate's face did not encourage questioning. "She's very rich, and old, and has no children.

Oughtn't we to make friends with her?"

"Jemima!" said her mother, sharply.

The girl looked at her in genuine surprise. "Have you never thought of that? Well, I think you should have, for our sakes. Even if you and she aren't good friends, need that make any difference with Jacky and me?

You see, Mother dear, it is we who are really Kildares, not you."

Kate turned abruptly and left the room, more hurt than she cared to show. Sometimes the paternal inheritance showed so strongly in Jemima as to frighten her; the same fierce pride of race, the same hardness, the same almost brutal frankness of purpose. A terrifying question rose in her mind. When they heard the truth about her, as hear it they soon must, would her children he loyal to her? Would they understand, and believe in her? As the girl had said, they were Kildares, and she was not.

So far, despite the frequently urged advice of Philip, she had kept them in ignorance of the facts of their father's death. They knew that he had been killed by a fall from his horse. They knew, too, that Philip's father was in the penitentiary, a "killer" as the phrase goes in a hot-blooded country where many crimes are regarded as less forgivable than homicide. But to connect the two tragedies had never occurred to them, and the isolation of their life, pa.s.sed almost entirely among inferiors and dependents, had made it possible to keep the truth from them. It would not be possible much longer.

But once more the mother postponed her moment of confession. It was the one cowardice of her life.

CHAPTER XII

The fact that, while the countryside had been astir for weeks with rumors of Jacques Benoix' impending release, her daughters were quite unaware of them was evidence of the Madam's complete sovereignty over her realm. It would have been a brave man or woman who dared to gossip of Mrs. Kildare's affairs with her children. They remained unconscious of the undercurrent of excitement and speculation in the atmosphere about them. In time, mention of the pardon and reference to the old-time scandal it revived, was made in the newspapers; but these papers failed to reach the reading-table at Storm, and the girls did not miss them.

Kate had never encouraged the reading of newspapers in her household, finding the monthly reviews cleaner and more reliable; and indeed the doings of people in the far-off world were less real to Jemima and Jacqueline than episodes in such novels as their mother read aloud by the evening lamp, while one girl sewed and the other lost herself in those dreams of youth which are such "long, long dreams."

They wondered a little, it is true, over Kate's frequent absences from home, and over the defection of Philip.

"He hasn't been here for days, and he used to come every evening,"

complained Jacqueline, always his sworn ally and companion. "No time for riding, or music, or even lessons--not that I'm complaining of that! But he's never been too busy for us before."

The fact was that Philip dared not trust himself at Storm just yet, not until he had accustomed himself to the immediate thought of Kate Kildare as his mother.

"Philip looks a little queer, too--sort of hollow about the eyes," mused Jemima, the observant. "Still, he always was rather a solemn person."

"No such thing, Jemmy!" cried Jacqueline, who could bear no criticism of the thing or person she loved. "He's positively giddy sometimes when I have him alone. Anyway, wouldn't you be solemn yourself, if you had a father in the penitentiary?"

"He ought to be used to it by this time. No, I don't believe it is that.

I believe it is mother."

"What do you mean--'mother'?"

"Oh, nothing. Only"--Jemima severely bit off a thread--"I do wish mother'd grow wrinkled or--or fat, or something, like other people's mothers."

"Why, Jemmy Kildare!" cried the other, shocked. "How can you say such a thing? Mother's the most beautiful person in the world!"

"Exactly. If I'm not mistaken, Philip thinks so too."

"Well, why shouldn't he? That's nothing to be solemn about."

The other smiled an enigmatical smile.

"Stop looking like that horrid Mona Lisa. You mean--" Jacqueline stared, then shouted with laughter. "Blossom, you're _too_ silly! Of course mother's the most beautiful person in the world, but after all she is--mother! She's old."

"Remember Henry Esmond."

"Pooh! That's in a novel. Why, Philip might as well get up a romantic pa.s.sion for--for the Sistine Madonna."

"Which would be exactly like him," commented Jemima; but Jacqueline dismissed the absurdity from her mind with another laugh.

From day to day now, Kate put off the breaking of her news. "Not yet,"

she pleaded with her better judgment. "I will wait till everything is settled."

She waited a day too long.

Jemima had driven down to the crossroads store for some pressing necessity of the sewing-room. Like many country stores, it combined the sale of groceries, fishing-tackle, hardware, dry-goods, and other commodities with the sale of wet-goods, the latter being confined to the rear portion of the establishment, opening upon a different road from the front portion.

The proprietor's wife, who usually managed the dry-goods and groceries'

section, happened to be absent at the time, and the proprietor's unaccustomed efforts to find the b.u.t.tons Jemima needed aroused her quick impatience.