, standing at the door, did not notice. He was
gazing at Mrs. Kildare questioningly.

There had come a groan from the inner room.

"What's that?" cried Jacqueline. She ran to investigate. "Oh! The _poor_
thing! What's the matter with her?"

Benoix would have stopped her, but Kate said shortly, "Nonsense, Phil.
My girls were born women. You ride for the doctor."

At dawn a faint, fierce whisper came from the inner room.

"Whar's my babby? What you-all doin' with my babby? You ain't goin' to
take her away from me? No, _no_! She's mine, I tell you!"

Jacqueline hurried in to her with the tiny, whimpering bundle. "Of
course she's yours, and the sweetest, fattest darling. Oh, Mag, how I
envy you!" She kissed the other's cheek.

There was a third girl in the room, a dainty, pink and white little
person who well deserved her pet-name of the "Apple Blossom." She looked
up in quick distaste from the bandages her capable hands were preparing,
and went out to her mother.

"Isn't it like Jacqueline? To sit outside all night with her fingers
stuffed in her ears, because she couldn't stand the groaning, and then
to--kiss the creature!"

Jemima was nineteen, a most sophisticated young woman.

Her mother smiled a little. "Yes," she admitted, "it is like Jacqueline,
and that's why she's going to do poor Mag more good than either of us.
The doctor says we shall be able to take Mag and the baby home
presently."

"Home!" Philip Benoix looked at her in amaze. Like the others, his face
was drawn and pale with that strange vigil. Death does not come so close
without leaving its mark on the watchers. "Miss Kate, surely you're not
going to take Mag Henderson into your own home?"

"Where else? You wanted me to evict her. I can't evict her into space."

"But, the responsibility!"

"Yes, there is a responsibility," said Kate Kildare, musing. "I don't
know whether it's mine or God's, or whose--and I can't afford to take
any chances."

"It will be easier to look after them at home," commented the practical
Jemima.

CHAPTER III

On the rare occasions when the mistress of Storm sat idle in her eyrie,
her household--children, negroes, even the motley assortment of dogs
that claimed her for their own--had learned to go their ways softly. The
morning after Mag's affair, three collies, a hound or so, and several
curs waited in a respectful row, tentative tails astir, with eyes fixed
patiently upon a certain great juniper-tree