d out her hand. She had expected Jemima. The girl clutched it
fast.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.

Kate wondered silently how much of Mahaly's confession she had heard.

The girl answered as if she had spoken. "I was there from the first. It
was I you heard when you gave the order to go out of ear-shot."

"And you didn't go out of ear-shot? That wasn't quite honorable,
daughter."

"No, but it was sensible. Do you think I'd have left you there alone to
a trying death-bed scene, weak as you are? Honorable!--how do you expect
me to be honorable?" she burst out, bitterly, "when you know the sort of
father I had? Sometimes of late I suspected, I began to think.... But
you would not tell me, you were too fine to tell me. And you let me make
a fool of myself, a perfect fool! Oh, I was so proud of being a Kildare,
one of the Kildares of Storm; so ashamed of anything that did not quite
come up to the standard of--of my father! Bah--_my father_! Not even man
enough to take the consequences of his sin, to stand by them. My
father," she cried fiercely, "was a coward! And I thought that
everything that is good in me, pride and courage, and truthfulness,
whatever manly virtues I may have, came from him, instead of--from you!"

"No, no--from yourself, dear," said Kate, quickly. "For everything that
is best in you, you have yourself to thank."

Jemima lifted up her head, and made her confession of renewed faith,
there in the dark. "But I'd rather thank you, Mother!"

It was Kate's first dose of the happiness the specialist had prescribed.

After a long pause, the voice spoke again out of the dark. "Mother--I
want you to marry Dr. Benoix. Do you understand? We owe it to him--all
of us. I _want_ you to marry him."

"Ah!" whispered Kate. "If I only could!"

"You've not given up? Oh, but you mustn't give up! He shall be found!
I'll find him myself, and bring him back to you, because it was I who
sent him away." (Kate smiled faintly at the egotism, but she did not
correct it.) "Oh, Mother, put your will into it!" urged the girl,
leaning over her. "You know you've never failed in anything you've put
your will into."

"I? Never failed?" repeated Kate, in bitter mockery.

"Now you're thinking of Jacqueline and Philip. That wasn't an error of
will, but of judgment.--This time, _I'm_ judging."

Boast that it was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her
abilities), somehow it put new heart in