to become an endowed home for crippled children.

At this news, indeed, Kate winced. Her husband had managed to strike at
her one last time from his grave, and in a vulnerable spot--her
maternity. He was forcing her to rob her children.

But she regained her calm. Surely such a father as Jacques Benoix was a
better gift to her children than houses and lands and cattle!

"I can't understand it," her bewildered mother moaned. "It's a cruel
will, almost an insulting will, daughter! It is almost as if
he--suspected you of something. What was Mr. Kildare thinking of? You
are so young, you have a right to re-marry! Surely he could have had
no--reason?"

Kate told her mother the reason; partly out of justice to her husband,
partly because her love was a thing she wished to confess.

The other rose to her feet, staggered, gasping: "Then they are true,
those dreadful rumors! You with a lover--you a married woman! Ah, my
little girl--my little girl! Such things do not happen in our family.
They do not! A scandal--a murder? Thank Heaven your father died in
time!"

It was Kate who comforted her mother. But in the midst of her soothing
caresses, a sudden trembling seized her. The color fled out of her
cheeks.

"Mother! What was that you said--A _murder_--?"

So at last the truth came, the truth which Mahaly and the few who loved
Kate had tried to keep out of that peaceful chamber. Jacques Benoix had
gone from her side to prison for the killing of her husband.

As soon as she was strong enough to travel--indeed before she was strong
enough to travel--Kate went to her lover in prison; saw him for ten
minutes alone.

She wasted not a moment in preliminaries; there had already developed in
her that ability for affairs that was later to make her one of the
foremost women of her State.

"I have engaged the best lawyers to be had for money," she said. "You
will never go to the penitentiary, Jacques!"

He shook his head, his eyes roaming over her hungrily, imprinting every
detail of her beauty on his memory to stay. "It is of no use, my dear
one."

She blenched a little. "You mean--you did kill Basil? But no! I don't
believe it. _You_ kill a man?" she laughed. "Why, you could not kill a
fox, a rabbit!"

"Nevertheless," he said, "I fear that I did kill Basil."

She caught at the doubt in his words. "You 'fear'--you do not _know_,
Jacques?"

"I know only that I tried."

He told her the story then. Others had wished to