o had long
been anxious to assume a more important part in the management of Storm,
and was rising to his opportunity very creditably.

At last a letter came from Philip which Jemima believed would rouse Kate
from her apathy. She read it--she opened all her mother's mail in those
days--and rushed into her mother's room, almost tearful with her news.

"He's found Channing at last!" she cried; "and Jacqueline was not with
him! Do you hear, Mother? Jacqueline was not with him at all! She never
had been. It was another woman--some one he has married. Oh, Mother,
_don't you understand_?"

Kate's eyes lifted very slowly to her face. "Then what," each word was
an effort, "has he done with my Jacqueline?--Is she dead?"

Jemima caught her hands. "No, no, dear! Listen!"--she spoke very
distinctly. "It was all a dreadful mistake--our mistake. She never went
to Mr. Channing at all. She simply ran away to New York to study her
singing, Philip says, and has been there all this time.--Oh, how can I
ever make it up to poor little Jacky? Imagine thinking such a thing of
her! I must have been crazy, jumping to such a _wicked_ conclusion!" In
her distress she wrung her hands. "And what must Jacqueline have been
thinking of us, leaving her alone there so long? Oh, Mother!--" a happy
idea had come to her. "Don't, let's leave her alone another day! Philip
may not have reached her yet--this letter was mailed in Paris, just
before he sailed. Let's go and find her ourselves, you and I!"

But the answering spark of eagerness she hoped for did not come.

"If Jacqueline wants me," said Kate, closing her eyes, "she will let me
know."

The coldness of the reply chilled Jemima. It seemed so utterly unlike
her impulsive, warm-hearted generous mother.

"Don't you realize how we have misunderstood her? Why, she hasn't
been--been wicked at all! She simply saw she had made a mistake, and
tried to undo it by going away--foolish, but so like Jacky, poor
darling!--Mother! You don't mean to say you're not going to _forgive_
her for running away?"

"_Forgive?_" repeated Kate wonderingly. Then she remembered that Jemima
had never been a mother.

"It is Jacqueline who cannot forgive me," she explained, in her dull and
lifeless voice.

Jemima gave up in despair. There was something about all this beyond her
understanding.

In a few days a second letter came from Philip, postmarked New York,
telling her that he had at last learned the where-abouts o