al don' keer for nothin'
no mo' but traipsin' down to de sto' an' gallivantin' roun' de roads wid
her fine clo'es on. She ain't no better'n a yaller nigger gal!"

Kate asked reluctantly (she did not take kindly to spying), "Have you
ever seen her with men, Liza?"

The black woman compressed her lips. "No'm, Miss Kate, I ain't nebber
prezackly _seed_ 'em--but laws, honey, dat kin' ob goin's-on don't aim
to be seed!"

Now that she had a more definite rumor to go by, Kate said sorrowfully
to Philip, "You told me it was a mistake to bring her here in the first
place. It seems to me I make a great many mistakes!" She sighed again.

"At least," said he, "they are the sort of mistakes that will get you
into heaven."

She laughed mirthlessly. "You always talk, you clergymen, as if you had
special advices from heaven in your vest-pockets!"

But she was comforted, nevertheless. She would have found it hard to do
without Philip's steady adulation.

CHAPTER XXXV

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 l