stood her in good stead. None of the business of the
great farm was neglected; but active as her mind was, through it all her
heart was dreaming, not as a girl dreams, but as a woman may who knows
well what she has missed of life. Spring had passed her by, with all its
promise blighted. Now, like her fields, she had come to late summer, to
the season of fulfilment.

There was much to be done in connection with Jacques Benoix' pardon;
certain men to be interviewed, not always successfully, though the woman
who had made Storm was heard with more respect than had been the
desperate young heroine of a scandal; lawyers to be seen, land-agents,
cattle-dealers, for in resigning her stewardship of the estate, a
certain amount of liquidation was necessary. Optimist that she was,
however, for years she had been preparing for this contingency. Her
affairs were in such order that at any moment she could turn them over
to others. Nothing that had any claim upon her was overlooked. The
servants, the horses in her stable, the very mongrel dogs who by the
instinct of their kind had discovered her weakness and spread the
discovery broadcast,--all had their share in her planning for the
future--their future, not hers.

Hers was to be put without question into the hands of Jacques Benoix.
She would go to him at the door of his prison-house and say, "Here I am,
as you left me. What will you do with us, me and my children?"

She would trust the answer to his wisdom, ready, glad to follow wherever
he should lead. Yet so much of herself, of her vital force, had gone
into the building up of Storm that sometimes a realization of what was
about to happen stabbed through her dreaming like a sharp pain. For
twenty years this had been her world, and she was about to leave it.
Often, as she passed among her young orchard trees, she laid a hand upon
them yearningly, as a mother might touch children with whom she was
about to part.

In all her planning, there was only one problem that baffled her, a new
problem: Mag Henderson. It was difficult to arrange a future for Mag
Henderson.

"I shall simply have to leave it to Jacques. He will know what to do
with her," she decided, with a thrill at the thought of her coming
dependence. It is only strength that realizes to the full the joy of
leaning.

Mag and her child were both thriving under the care lavished upon them
at Storm. They had been established in a room of the long-disused
guest-wing, wh