In another moment, all was motion again. John Cabot gathered the lax form of his son into his arms. A detached look was on his face as he answered the questions of the policeman and other eye witnesses. But while he nodded vaguely and gave his name and address in a quiet voice, he remembered everything, even the puppy. Dolores took up the search of his eyes; followed and picked up the confused little dog. She felt a resentment very like hate at the insinuating way he wagged his tail, as though trying to humbug her into approval of his conduct When she rejoined John——
“Come, Dolores,” he said.
Always before he had called her “Miss Trent.”
When they reached the wrought-iron gate into the Cabot grounds he stepped aside for her to precede him. That he should think of the puppy and her before himself——
Even in that first full hour, she was impressed by these small remembrances. They told her more of the man than all the greater things which had been accredited to him.
She it was who led the way around the clustered shrubbery and past the dryad of the cynical smirk. At the steps she had to right herself from stumbling. Although she was not weeping, she could not see.
“Jackie.... Jack!”
She had not spoken his name; merely had thought it in a hurting dread for herself as well as for him. Was catastrophe always to follow her? Had she brought it upon the boy by growing so close to him through love? That name he had revealed—his “secret” name for her—had that aught to do with the close-heeling of tragedy?
“Other mother,” was what he had called her.
Other mother!