cried Nancy
Ellen.

"Not so much at that time; but this is nearly twenty years later, and I
have the fate of my children in my hands. I wish you'd go to bed and
let me think!" said Kate.

"Yes, and the longer you think the crazier you will act," cried Nancy
Ellen. "I know you! You better promise me now, and stick to it."

For answer Kate turned off the light; but she did not go to bed. She
sat beside the window and she was still sitting there when dawn crept
across the lake and began to lighten the room. Then she stretched
herself beside Nancy Ellen, who roused and looked at her.

"You just coming to bed?" she cried in wonder.

"At least you can't complain that I didn't think," said Kate, but Nancy
Ellen found no comfort in what she said, or the way she said it. In
fact, she arose when Kate did, feeling distinctly sulky. As they
returned to their room from breakfast, Kate laid out her hat and gloves
and began to get ready to keep her appointment. Nancy Ellen could
endure the suspense no longer.

"Kate," she said in her gentlest tones, "if you have no mercy on
yourself, have some on your children. You've no right, positively no
right, to take such a chance away from them."

"Chance for what?" asked Kate tersely.

"Education, travel, leisure, every opportunity in the world,"
enumerated Nancy Ellen.

Kate was handling her gloves, her forehead wrinkled, her eyes narrowed
in concentration.

"That is one side of it," she said. "The other is that neither my
children nor I have in our blood, breeding, or mental cosmos, the
background that it takes to make one happy with money in unlimited
quantities. So far as I'm concerned personally, I'm happier this
minute as I am, than John Jardine's money ever could make me. I had a
fierce struggle with that question long ago; since I have had nearly
eight years of life I love, that is good for my soul, the struggle to
leave it would be greater now. Polly would be happier and get more
from life as the wife of big gangling Henry Peters, than she would as a
millionaire's daughter. She'd be very suitable in a farmhouse parlour;
she'd be a ridiculous little figure at a ball. As for Adam, he'd turn
this down quick and hard."

"Just you try him!" cried Nancy Ellen.

"For one thing, he won't be here at ten o'clock," said Kate, "and for
another, since it involves my becoming the wife of John Jardine, it
isn't for Adam to decide. This decision is strictly my own. I mer