Channing,
even had she wished. And Jemima continued to watch her mail with a
hawk's eye.

Channing's word of honor not to communicate with the girl would have
seemed, in itself, an insufficient safeguard to Kate, had not her
knowledge of men reassured her. She believed that her daughter was not
the type to arouse more than a passing interest in such a man as
Channing. Her beauty, her flattered response to his attentions, her
fresh, unsophisticated charm of gaiety, might well appeal to him for a
time, adding the fillip of the unaccustomed to a jaded palate. But it
was an appeal that must be constantly renewed, that would not outlast
any continued absence. She believed that Channing, while he would accept
with eagerness whatever good thing came to his hand, was too indolent
and too self-centered to overcome many obstacles in the pursuit of a
fancy.

Jacqueline herself was reassuring, too. Her manner of receiving the news
of Channing's perfidy had showed her no stranger to the Kildare pride.
She seemed to regard the affair as a closed incident.

"Do you think," said Kate proudly to Philip, "that my daughter would
care to have anything to do with the man, now that she knows his utter
unworthiness?"

"It is just possible that she was attracted to Channing by other
qualities than worthiness," commented Philip. "Weakness, for instance.
Women have been attracted by weakness before this."

"Phil, Phil," Kate laughed, "you are an 'elderly young man,' as Jacky
says! Almost as elderly and wise as our Jemima. Stop croaking and come
and see the new wedding garments Mag is putting on my old chairs."

She flung an affectionate arm about him, and led him indoors, his heart
beating too hard and suddenly to make further speech possible just
then.--Yet there was much he wished to say, and not about Jacqueline.
These wedding preparations stirred certain yearnings in his breast,
certain eager hopes. It seemed to him that his lady was warmer lately,
more approachable, more present, somehow. Was she, too, stirred by all
this thought and talk of marriage? It was hard to wait patiently. Yet he
was too good a horseman to rush his fences.

Mag on her knees, her mouth full of pins, was cleverly fitting slips of
gay-flowered cretonne over the masculine chairs and sofas, assisted, or
at least not hindered, by Jacqueline.

"The old hall won't know itself, will it?" cried the latter, waving them
a welcome. "All got up in ruffles and things,