"Very sudden," agreed Jemima. "Now shall we go in to mother?"
Perforce, he opened Mrs. Kildare's door, and announced with his cheeriest bedside manner, "Here's your girl home again."
The heavy eyes flew open. "Jacqueline!" she whispered.
But when she saw that it was not Jacqueline, the lids closed, and it seemed too much trouble to lift them again.
Jemima went on her knees, and laid a timid cheek on her mother's hand, that strong, beautiful hand lying so strangely limp now upon the counterpane. For the first time in her life she knew the feeling of utter helplessness. Her efficiency had failed her. In this emergency, she could not produce the thing her mother needed.
She wished with all her heart for her inefficient sister.
CHAPTER XLVI
Philip's pursuit of his wife came to have for him, before it was done, something of the strangeness of a nightmare, one of those endless dreams that come to fever patients, filled with confused, vague details of places and persons among whom he passed, leaving nothing clear to the memory afterwards except unhappiness.
And indeed the mental condition that urged him on was not unlike fever, compounded as it was of passionate pity for Jacqueline, and white-hot rage against the man who had taken his wife from him. He could not bear to think of the frightened misery that must have driven the girl to such a step, nor of the wretched disillusionment in store for her. Jacqueline ashamed; his gallant, loyal, high-hearted little playmate cowering under the whips of the world's scorn—it was a thought that drove all the youth out of Philip's face, and left it so grim and fierce that many a passing stranger stared at him covertly, wondering what tragedy lay behind such a mask of pain.