the subject, having said what he had come to say; but
inwardly he thought, "She's a brick! She's a loyal, plucky little brick,
and Channing is a--skunk! Perhaps she chucked him, though," he reminded
himself hopefully. "Serve him good and plenty if she did."

Thereafter the master of Holiday Hill spent as much time as he possibly
could at Storm, Kate looking on at Jacqueline's friendly flirtation with
him with something between a smile and a sigh.

The girl was doing a good deal in the way of flirtation just then, not
only with Farwell, but with several of the earlier "victims" who
continued to come out from Lexington occasionally, and were encouraged
to come more often. Kate had been through just such a stage of
unhappiness herself, the reckless, desperate, defiant stage, when
trouble is to be kept at bay only by sheer bravado. And she had been
watched safely through it by the understanding eyes of Jacques Benoix,
even as Jacqueline would be watched through it by the understanding eyes
of his son.

For it was only with Philip the girl dared to be quite herself just
then, _distraite_ and talkative by turns, subject to long silences,
followed by bursts of wild gaiety. The change in his manner to her was
very marked, he no longer teased and chaffed her as he had been wont to
do, but treated her with a quiet affection, almost a deference; the
_camaraderie_ offered to a friend who has come abreast of oneself on the
hard path of life. Jacqueline in trouble, gallant and uncomplaining and
piteously gay, was a Jacqueline who appealed to every instinct of
chivalry in his fine nature.

If it had not been for Kate herself, the thing she so greatly desired
might very well have come to pass just then. He might have fallen in
love with Jacqueline. But unfortunately Kate was there, never lovelier
than in her guarding, tender maternity; and for Philip other women, as
women, did not exist.

Into this rather disturbed atmosphere of Storm arrived one day the new
Mrs. Thorpe, quite unexpectedly and with something of a flourish.

Jacqueline, hearing outside the sound of a mellifluous horn which she
did not recognize, ran to the window and reported company approaching,
"But it isn't Mr. Farwell, Mummy, and it isn't victims. It's a lady all
dressed up. Why, Mummy, it's--no, it can't be. Yes it is too! It's the
bride and groom, in a new Ark!"

Jemima was herself engineering a smart blue-painted touring-car up the
hill, somewhat cautiou