"There, there," murmured Kate, moved. "Glad to have me home again, my precious? But you needn't crack my ribs in your belated ardor. Where have you been so late?"
"Oh, just roaming around," she said vaguely. "The twilight was so lovely."
"Little dreamer!" Sighing, she knew not why, Kate drew the glowing face to her own.
But for once Jacqueline of the eager lips turned her cheek, so that her mother's kiss should not disturb the memory of certain others.
CHAPTER XIX
If Mrs. Kildare's eyes had been of their usual observant keenness in those days, she could not have failed to notice the change in Jacqueline; a new loveliness, a sudden bursting into bloom of the womanhood that had lain hidden in the bud. Her eyes took on a starry softness quite different from their usual glint of mischief, the rich blood in her cheeks came and went with her thoughts, her very hair had a sort of sheen upon it like the luster on the wings of pigeons in the spring. Blossom time, that comes once in life to every woman, with its perilous short gift of the power that moves the world, had come in turn to Jacqueline. It is a moment when a girl most needs her mother; but Kate's thoughts were elsewhere.
People were saying among themselves, "The Madam's beginning to show her age." But they could not have said in just what way she showed it. There was no diminution of her tireless energy; she rode her spirited horses with the same supple ease; no pallor showed in her warm cheeks; no lines in the broad space between her brows; no gray in the glinting chestnut of her hair, as abundant and as splendidly vital as Jacqueline's own. The change was as subtle as the change in Jacqueline; yet many people spoke of it.
Sometimes on the road she passed acquaintances without seeing them; or in the midst of some important conversation, they became aware that she was listening only with her eyes. She spent much time under the juniper tree, sitting idle, her gaze fixed on the shadow over the distant penitentiary, which it had for years avoided. When that shadow hung over Jacques Benoix, her thoughts had at least known where to seek him, as the Moslem when he prays turns toward the east. Now her thoughts had no Mecca. They sought him homeless throughout the world.
Unused to introspection as she was, Kate had made a discovery about herself. Of the two types of strong-hearted women created, the mother-type and the lover-type, she would have said that she belonged indubitably to the former; that hers was a life led chiefly for and in her children. Now she knew that it was not so. Her work for them, her absorption in their welfare, their property and education and character—what were these but so much makeshift to fill the empty years until Jacques came to her?