"I see," he said again, lightly. It was not his policy to discourage confidences. "So Mr. Channing writes songs, as well as novels?"

"Oh, wonderful ones, Phil! You'd love them. I do wish you could hear them."

"I'd like to. Why not bring me the next time you come to practise?"

She looked down; then her eyes met his frankly. "I'd rather not, Phil.

He wouldn't like it. Geniuses are peculiar. You see, we sing better when we're not disturbed. You know how that is, don't you?"

His heart contracted with sudden sympathy. He knew only too well "how it was." It seemed to him that lately his life was one long conspiracy against Fate to find Kate Kildare alone. Abroad, the eyes of the world seemed always turned upon them; at home she was surrounded by an impregnable barrier of daughters. On the rare occasions when he did manage to achieve the coveted _solitude a deux_, their talk was of farming, of the parish, of business, and in the end always of his father, his father. Her dependence upon him, her affection for him, was evident, but there was a curiously impersonal, almost absent-minded quality about it that sometimes chilled Philip and his budding hopes.

When she spoke out her inmost thoughts, even when she took his hand or laid her arm across his shoulders with the impulsive, caressing gestures that were as common to her as to Jacqueline, he had the feeling that she was thinking of another man.

Philip was well fitted to understand Jacqueline just then. "My dear," he said quietly, "are you in love with Mr. Channing?"

The question took her by surprise. She paled, and then the lovely rose came over her face again in a hot flood. "Oh, yes, _yes_, Phil!" she cried eagerly. "Do come and ride beside me, and let me tell you all about it. I've been wanting dreadfully to tell somebody who would understand. You're _such_ a comfortable sort of person."

Philip's greatest gift was the art of listening. He employed it now, turning to her a glance steady and encouraging, concealing the anxiety that gnawed at his mind, why he could not say. The natural priest is as intuitive perhaps as the natural woman.

She took him into her confidence fully, concealing nothing. He learned about their daily meetings, either at the Ruin, or if Farwell happened to be absent, at Holiday Hill. She told him of their long automobile rides together, while she was supposed to be off exercising some of the horses; of the book he was beginning to write with her a.s.sistance; ("I inspire it," she explained gravely); of his belief in her own future career as a singer.

"He's going to help me, to introduce me to singers and teachers and--impresarios, I think they're called. He's going to make mother send me abroad to study, first. He says it's wicked to keep me shut up here away from life. All artists have got to see a great deal of life, you know, if they're to amount to anything. Oh, isn't it wonderful?" she broke off, "that such a man as that should ever have noticed me at all?"

Philip, glancing at the radiant young face, did not find it altogether wonderful.

"I suppose he makes love to you?" he asked.

She dimpled. "Of course! But in such a funny way, Phil. He doesn't seem to mean to, or to want to, exactly. We read a good deal, and talk about the world, and things like that, and sing--but all the time I know what he's thinking about, and--and I'm thinking about it, too! We don't read and sing and talk _all_ the time--" She clasped her hands ecstatically, lines and all. "Oh, Phil darling, I wish you were in love, too! It's so perfect.--But you will be some day, and then I hope," she added quaintly, "that you'll have somebody as dear and comfortable as you are to confide in. A spiritual pastor and master is so safe, too. You may scold me, Reverend, and you may laugh at me--you're doing it now--but you can never tell on me."

"No," he admitted, "I never can. But why not tell on yourself, dear? Why so much mystery? Are you ashamed of being in love?"

He looked at her keenly. But though she hesitated, she met his eyes without embarra.s.sment. "I think I am, a little. Not ashamed, exactly, but--shy. It's such a queer feeling, being in love. I never had it before. It makes you want not to eat, or sleep, or play with the baby, or do anything but just think of him; how he looked the last time you saw him, what he said, and--did. If people knew, they'd tease me, and watch me, and I couldn't bear that. I just couldn't bear it! Then there's Jemmy. She's so odd. She doesn't like to see me kissing the baby, even, or loving it. She thinks it isn't quite nice. If she knew about Mr. Channing--! Besides, she's so much cleverer than I am, so much more his sort, really. If he'd known her first he would probably have liked her best. I'd rather--just for a while, I'd rather--"

"Keep him out of Jemima's reach?" murmured Philip, amused.

She nodded. "You _do_ understand things, don't you? Jemmy's so much cleverer than I am. Just until I'm sure of him, Philip--"

He asked quietly, "You're not sure of him, then?"

She gave him a demure glance under her infantile lashes. "Oh, yes, I am!

But he's not quite sure of himself." She chuckled. "Mr. Channing _thinks_ he doesn't want to marry any one, you see!"

It was what Philip had been waiting for from the first. His voice changed a little, and became the voice of the priest. "You need not tell your sister, Jacqueline; but your mother ought to know of this."

"I don't want her to know."

"Why not?"

"Oh, because," was the purely feminine answer. She added, troubled by his grave silence, "Mummy might not want me to see so much of him, if she knew. She can't realize that I'm grown up now. Old people forget how they felt when they were young." She was vaguely trying to express love's dread of being brought to earth, of being hampered by the fetters of a fixed relation.

"'Old people!' Your mother?" Philip spoke rather sharply.

"Oh, well, not _old_, of course. Still, she's too old to fall in love.--Anyway, there are some things a girl can't talk about with her mother; you ought to know there are." The glance she gave him was both embarra.s.sed and appealing.

Alas for Kate's carefully fostered intimacy with her children, vanished at the first touch of a warmer breath!

Philip put his hand over hers on the bridle-rein. "My dear," he said earnestly, "there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you cannot talk about with your mother. She's that sort. Always remember it."

She jerked her hand away with a pettish gesture. "For goodness' sake, stop being so ancient and fatherly! And what right have you to tell me anything about mother? I don't mind your explaining about G.o.d to me, and Christian duty, and things like that. It's your business, and I suppose it bores you as much as anybody. But when you talk as if you had a special vested right in my own mother,--that's _too_ much! As if you could possibly know her as well as I do!"

She spurred her horse and galloped ahead furiously. But at the next turn of the road she was waiting, remorseful.

"Forgive me for being a crosspatch, Flippy dear?" Her voice would have coaxed forgiveness from a stone. "I always am sort of--sort of foolish about mummy, you know."

"I have no fault to find with you for being foolish about your mother,"

said Philip.

"Then, that's all right!" She blew him a kiss, and prepared to leave him. "And of course I will tell her everything, soon. When she knows, she's going to be glad, gladder than anybody. I remember once,"--the girl's face grew very tender--"we were just little things, Jemmy and I, but she was talking to us, like she does. She said, 'When the right man comes along, my girlies, be sure he is the right man, and then _don't be afraid_. Love him with all your might and main, and be sure he knows it.

There's nothing in the world so mean as a n.i.g.g.ardly lover!' I--I am not a n.i.g.g.ardly lover, Philip," she added shyly.

His throat contracted. Jacqueline's navete was singularly touching to him.

"Wait a moment," he said, detaining her. "Since I must keep the great secret, I want you to promise me one thing. Do not go to Mr. Farwell's house alone any more. You see," he explained to her widened eyes, "there aren't any women there. Girls do not call on men."

"I go to your house whenever I like!"

He smiled. "As you yourself said once, I'm 'not men.' But it isn't done, little girl. Take my word for that, please."

"Very well!" she chuckled. "You sound like Jemmy!--But I promise. I like the Ruin better anyway. More private."

She waved back at him, put her horse lightly over a fence, and was off across the fields at a full gallop.

He went his way thoughtfully. Philip was beginning to find his duties as guardian of Kate Kildare and her children somewhat onerous. He tried to rea.s.sure himself with the thought of Jacqueline's youth. Mature as she had become in body, in mind she was still a child. At that age, love could not be lasting.

But while it lasted, could it not devastate?

Often in this Kentucky valley he had known languorous Februaries when orchard and garden, deceived by a fierce-wooing sun, trustingly put forth their treasures, only to find them blackened and withered when the true spring came. Dear little Jacqueline, glowing, tremulous, instinct with the joy and pa.s.sion of giving--for to Kate Kildare's child love meant always giving--was she to know so soon the blight of disillusionment?

"Not if I can help it," muttered Philip, squaring his jaws, and set his horse once more in the direction of Holiday Hill.

He intended to discover just how far and for what reason Percival Channing was averse to the state of matrimony.

CHAPTER XXIII

Jacqueline had presently another confidante, who came to her by chance; not Kate, still absorbed in her readjustment to life without Jacques Benoix, and not Jemima, even more absorbed in the preparation for her approaching visit. Jacqueline, indeed, was somewhat in disgrace with her sister. "Isn't it just like her," thought the older girl impatiently, "to go and make such a success of herself, and then sit back calmly and expect me to do the rest?"

Jemima had from her mother one gift of the born executive: the ability to recognize other people's abilities as well as their limitations. In a quite unenvious and impersonal way, she appreciated the superior charm of her sister, and intended to use it, backed by her own superior intelligence, for the benefit of both of them. Jacqueline's complete lack of interest in the social campaign was a serious blow to her plans, but she met it with stoic philosophy.