sound of wheels in the trail below, had been startled to see a woman
descending from a wagon, whom he at first mistook for Kate Kildare
herself. She was helped by Bates the peddler, met by good chance in the
town below.

"Here comes another worker for the Lord's vineyard!" beamed the peddler,
as the school-teacher, recovering his breath, hurried to meet them.

"And a most welcome one! If I were a religious man, I should think you
an answer to prayer, so great is our need of help."

"Help? Do you think _I_ can be of any help?" asked Jacqueline,
wistfully--a very changed Jacqueline she was, pale and drawn-looking,
and with a new little dignity about her which the physician was quick to
observe. "I'm not a capable person, you know, like mother and Jemmy. I
do know a little about sewing, though, and cooking, and housekeeping,
and--and--"

"Singing, I remember," smiled her host, "and making people comfortable,
I think? The very things we need most, my dear. It is maddening in a
place like this to be limited to one set of brains, and arms, and
legs--and those masculine. Ah, but I am glad that you have come!"

"So am I." Jacqueline breathed a grateful sigh. "But--" she swallowed
hard, and looked him squarely in the face--"I want you to know that I am
hiding away from everybody.--Must I tell you why?"

He took off his spectacles, so that she saw his eyes. Great kindliness
dawned in them, a warm, understanding, tender gravity that had once
before reminded her of somebody she trusted. He leaned toward her.

"I, too, am hiding away from those I love.--Must I tell you why, my
daughter?"

She stared at him, her gaze widening. Suddenly she knew him, and with a
little cry, her arms went about his neck.

CHAPTER XLVIII

It was some time before her mother began to do much credit to Jemima's
reputation as a nurse. The nature of her illness, if illness it could be
called, was baffling. She had neither pain nor temperature, her pulse
was steady, though not strong, she ate and even slept as she was bidden,
with a docility that was one of the most alarming symptoms of all in the
Madam, hitherto impatient as a healthy man of restraint and control. She
was content, to lie day after day in her room, she who had perhaps not
spent more than a few weeks in bed during the whole course of her
previous life, and then only when her children were born.

"I can't understand it," wrote young Mrs. Thorpe to her husband--a
humiliating