The girl was doing a good deal in the way of flirtation just then, not only with Farwell, but with several of the earlier "victims" who continued to come out from Lexington occasionally, and were encouraged to come more often. Kate had been through just such a stage of unhappiness herself, the reckless, desperate, defiant stage, when trouble is to be kept at bay only by sheer bravado. And she had been watched safely through it by the understanding eyes of Jacques Benoix, even as Jacqueline would be watched through it by the understanding eyes of his son.
For it was only with Philip the girl dared to be quite herself just then, distraite and talkative by turns, subject to long silences, followed by bursts of wild gaiety. The change in his manner to her was very marked, he no longer teased and chaffed her as he had been wont to do, but treated her with a quiet affection, almost a deference; the camaraderie offered to a friend who has come abreast of oneself on the hard path of life. Jacqueline in trouble, gallant and uncomplaining and piteously gay, was a Jacqueline who appealed to every instinct of chivalry in his fine nature.
If it had not been for Kate herself, the thing she so greatly desired might very well have come to pass just then. He might have fallen in love with Jacqueline. But unfortunately Kate was there, never lovelier than in her guarding, tender maternity; and for Philip other women, as women, did not exist.
Into this rather disturbed atmosphere of Storm arrived one day the new Mrs. Thorpe, quite unexpectedly and with something of a flourish.
Jacqueline, hearing outside the sound of a mellifluous horn which she did not recognize, ran to the window and reported company approaching, "But it isn't Mr. Farwell, Mummy, and it isn't victims. It's a lady all dressed up. Why, Mummy, it's—no, it can't be. Yes it is too! It's the bride and groom, in a new Ark!"
Jemima was herself engineering a smart blue-painted touring-car up the hill, somewhat cautiously but with her usual air of determination. She remarked tensely to the beaming gentleman beside her, "Wave to them, James, please. I can't spare a hand."
When the excited greetings were over, Jemima looked about her with a contented sigh. "New York was very grand and rich, but I'm glad to be back in this queer, shabby old house. Aunt Jemima asked all about everything, Mother—whether you had left the stuffed horse's head on the wall, whether the turkeys still tried to roost on the front porch, what you had done with father's old servants, especially Mahaly—she seemed to be particularly interested in Mahaly, for some reason or other. I told her everything was just as it had been always—and it is, thank goodness!" She spoke as if she had expected to find cataclysmic changes after an absence of three weeks. "Dogs overrunning the place, and Big Liza warbling at the top of her lungs in the kitchen, and you in your second-best riding skirt at this hour in the afternoon—naughty mother! Everything just the same as if—" Her roving eyes chanced to rest on her sister's face, and she stopped short.
"So you saw your Aunt Jemima?" asked Kate quickly, to change the subject.
"Oh, yes, of course, Mother. That's one reason we went to New York." She was full of the visit to her father's aunt, and forgot for the moment her shock at the change in Jacqueline. "Such a wonderful place—a house as big as a hotel, and lawns that are evidently shaved and clipped and bathed as regularly as her pet poodle. But—think of it! She is seventy years old, and powdered and rouged like an actress!—Her manner was just a little—patronizing at first, but she soon got over that."
Thorpe chuckled. "My wife astonished her into a lamb-like meekness. She informed her that while she resembled the Kildare portraits to some slight degree, most of them were rather handsomer."