The two stood and listened. She sang to herself very softly, unconscious of an audience, one of the Songs of the Hill:
"A little winding road
Goes over the hill to the plain—
A little road that crosses the plain
And comes to the hill again."
Kate realized the difference in Jacqueline's voice since she had heard it last in that Song of the Hill; clear and expressionless, then, as a boy's; so throbbing now, so poignant with understanding, that the mother's eyes filled with tears. Jemima's, too, were a little moist, and she blinked them hard, and steeled herself to say to Jacqueline that day what she had come to say.
The child must not slip further into an irrevocable mistake, if she could help it.
She made an opportunity as soon as possible to get her alone. "Jacky," she said abruptly, "are you quite sure you want to marry Philip,—and that he wants to marry you?"
The girl turned a startled face upon her—"Why, Jemmy, he asked me! Why would he ask me if he didn't want me?"
"I suspect Philip does many things he does not want to.—Didn't he know all about—Mr. Channing?" She looked mercifully away from the other's blanching face, "I wonder if that might have anything to do with his asking you?"
She waited nervously for a reply. Even the most confident of surgeons have their moments of suspense.
It came very low, "I never thought of that, Jemmy. Perhaps you are right.—Oh, if that is so, I just can't be loving enough to him to make up for his goodness, can I? Darling old Phil!—You see it was because he did know all about Mr. Channing" (the voice was almost inaudible now) "that I knew I could marry him. We understand each other, you see. I'd never expect to be first with him, to take mother's place with him, any more than he expects to take—And—and so—we could comfort each other." The voice failed utterly here, and Jacqueline ran blindly out of the room, up to the never-failing solace of Mag's baby; leaving Jemima with the miserable sensation of having been cruel where she meant to be kind, and cruel to no purpose.
That night, when Philip came at his usual time, Jacqueline settled the matter once for all. She perched upon the arm of his chair, holding his head against her shoulder so that he could not look at her.