nnot
keep my love from going to you, and you will know. For me there is only
you in the world. The other things are shadows. You will
remember--whatever happens, you will remember?"

She smiled: there was no need to answer.

She asked, incuriously: "What are those feet in the hall? What are they
carrying?"

He answered, "Basil Kildare."

"Basil? He is hurt?"

"He is dead," said Benoix.

After a moment she began to laugh--but very softly, so that the sleeping
baby on her breast might not be disturbed: "Oh, thank God, thank God!
God is good to us, Jacques!"

He stopped the terrible words on her lips with his own. There were feet
on the stairs. He tried to speak to her once more from the door, but he
could not. He closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER VII

The peace of that quiet time with her lover remained with Kate through
the days that followed, even as he had intended it should, guarding her
like an armor from the seething excitement of the world beyond her door.
Wailing servants, friends arriving from far and near, people filling the
house with lamentations (for the kindly magic of Death had transformed
Kildare for the moment into the noblest of mortals)--all this stopped at
the door of the quiet room where Mahaly mounted guard over the mistress
she had betrayed.

None entered that room save the old doctor, and later Kate's mother,
become suddenly an old woman, broken by the terrible rumors which had
penetrated her peaceful Bluegrass home. She was shocked beyond words to
find her newly widowed daughter serene as some Madonna out of a
painting, wrapped in a rose-colored dressing-gown that would better have
suited a bride.

"Whatever comes, you will remember how I love you," Benoix had said.
Kate was remembering.

She lay dreaming of the future, thinking sometimes of her husband, not
unkindly, but with pity, as one thinks of poor, blundering people who
have gone through life unloving and unloved. Of his death she thought
not at all. It was what he would have chosen, painless and quick, a fall
from his horse within sight of his own house. So her mother found her,
calm and very beautiful, placidly nursing her child.

Only once was the agitated lady able to prick her serenity. It was when
she began to babble of Kildare's will. This stipulated that in case of
re-marriage, Kate and her children were to be deprived of any interest
in the estate save only that provided by law, in which event Storm was