"I do not know how much he may suspect, but that is not my affair. Jacqueline will tell him about it herself, doubtless ... after they are married," replied Kate, serenely.
Others entering the room just then put a stop to the conversation; but for the rest of the evening young Mrs. Thorpe was thoughtful. She knew the Madam's capacity for carrying out intentions. Watching Philip closely, his brotherly tenderness to Jacqueline contrasted with the silent, almost worshipful adoration her mother took so astonishingly for granted, she realized that it would be difficult for his lady to put any test to his devotion too difficult for him to perform. It seemed probable that Kate would succeed in covering one blunder with another blunder.
A great sympathy for Philip came over her—sympathy being a recently developed trait of Jemima's. She saw him suddenly as a piteous figure, even more piteous than her listless young sister, who would, after all, revive like a thirsty flower with the first draft of love that came to her reaching roots. Her mother had been right there.—But what was to atone to Philip for his lonely childhood, his lonely youth, always with the shadow resting upon it; his hopeless infatuation for a woman who would not see, his whole life devoted to that cold and thankless lot of service to others?
"We've taken too much from Philip as it is," she thought. "I must put a stop to this, somehow!"
She decided to drop a hint of warning to Jacqueline herself. Treachery it might be, but, as has been seen, Jemima was quite capable of treachery when it marched with expediency.
Drop a hint she accordingly did, one of her own especial brand of hints, as delicate and as subtle as a dynamite bomb.
It occurred at bedtime, when Jemima—the Thorpes were spending the night—slipped across into the room that had been the nursery to chat with her sister in the old-time intimacy of hair-brushing. Indeed, the room was still a nursery, for the crib that had been in turn Jemima's and Jacqueline's was drawn up close beside Jacqueline's bed, and contained the rosy, sleeping Kitty, with a favorite rattle tight clasped in one pink fist.
"Isn't she too precious, Jemmy?" whispered her foster-mother, who was leaning over the crib as her sister entered.
Jemima responded without particular enthusiasm—to her small Kitty would always represent in concrete form the doctrine of Original Sin. She said, "Come and let me show you how to fix your hair, dear, as they do it in New York. You're old enough now to wear it up."
"I try to, but it won't stay put, there's such a mop of it!" She submitted willingly to the other's deft ministrations. "Neither mother nor I look half as nice since you got married, Jemmy. Oh, I do love your smooth hands!" She held one affectionately to her cheek. "They're so nimble and sure of themselves, as if each finger had a little brain of its own that knew just exactly what it was about."