fluttering against his cheek. Jacqueline's kisses were like the dew from
heaven, which falls alike upon the just and the unjust; none the less
blessed, perhaps, for that.

Philip had more than his share of these attentions, because Kate did not
seem to need them. She still drove silently, sitting upright, staring
straight before her.

Once the girl leaned far out of the phaeton, and waved a handkerchief
three times, as if she were signaling. There was an answering flutter
from beneath the juniper-tree.

"Who is that in the eyrie?" It was the first time Kate had spoken for
hours, and her voice seemed to come with a great effort.

"Why, it's the Blossom, Mother. She hasn't gone yet. She was waiting
till the last possible moment, to be sure whether--whether Philip's
father was with you. I promised to signal her yes or no."

Kate turned suddenly and looked at her. "Why did Jemima think he might
not be with me?"

The girl answered very low, "Because--because she wrote to him."

The colts with a last gallant effort breasted the hill at a trot. At the
door a wagon was waiting with a trunk in it, and Jemima stood beside it,
dressed for traveling. But as they appeared, she dropped the satchel out
of her hand and ran toward the phaeton.

"Bring brandy, Mag--be quick!" she called over her shoulder as she ran.

She had seen what the others had failed to notice: that her mother,
still sitting upright with the lines in her hands, was quite
unconscious.

CHAPTER XV

Years before, when gentle Mrs. Leigh turned her back forever upon the
beloved Bluegrass town of her youth, and came to spend the remaining
years of her life at Storm--for with all her ineffectiveness she was not
the woman to leave her daughter alone in disgrace and sorrow--Kate had
tried to make the strange country more homelike for her by building an
Episcopal church. Meeting-houses of several denominations had been long
established there; but to Mrs. Leigh, with Virginia and English
antecedents, "church" meant candles on the altar, a vested choir, a
rector in robes reading the familiar service of her childhood. She was
willing to concede to Methodists, Baptists, Campbellites, other
attendants of meeting-houses, a possible place in heaven; but hardly in
the best society of heaven; and she was one of the people who cannot
worship God comfortably except in the best society.

The church Kate built was small and plain--she had found her husband's
estate