ting her children, of
leaving them too much to the care of others while she absented herself
upon their business. She begrudged, as mothers of dead children
begrudge, every necessary moment she had spent away from them. What
things were they saying in there, what things were they thinking of
their mother?

At last she went upon her knees beside the door, her ear shamelessly at
the keyhole. Jemima heard her there, and opened.

She said coldly, "You might have come in, if you wanted so much to hear
what we were saying. The door was not locked. We have been deciding
where we shall go."

Kate got with difficulty to her feet. "Where you shall go?" she
repeated.

Then she thought she understood. Jemima had remembered the terms of her
father's will, by which in case of her mother's re-marriage the property
of Storm was forfeit.

"Oh, but daughter!"--the words tumbled over each other in their
eagerness to be out. "You need not trouble about that! Losing Storm
won't matter. You lose only what your father left, and I have doubled
that--trebled it. Besides, there is the little property that came to me
from my parents. I've always meant, when I married, to give you more
than my marriage would cost you. That is why I have worked so hard, and
saved. Perhaps you thought me miserly, grasping? I know people do. But
that is why. The money is to be yours, all yours and Jacqueline's--at
once, not after I die. We shall need very little, Jacques and I. Just a
start somewhere--"

The girl stopped the hurrying words with a gesture of some dignity. "We
have not thought about the money part yet, Mother. We were simply
deciding where to live now."

"To live?" The words were puzzled.

"Yes. Surely you don't expect us to go on living with you and our
father's murderer?"

Kate groped at the wall behind her for support. Here was a thing she had
not thought of. She had known that she might lose her children's
respect, perhaps, temporarily, their love; but she had counted
unconsciously upon the force of daily habit, of companionship, of her
own personal magnetism, to win back both, as she had won them from
others. Deprived of their companionship, what chance had she? They were
lost to her, utterly. Yet not even in that bitter moment did it occur to
her that she might fail the man who was coming back to her out of his
living death.

She said tonelessly, "You are very young to leave your mother. Where
could you go?"

The girl had her ans