The coldness of the reply chilled Jemima. It seemed so utterly unlike her impulsive, warm-hearted generous mother.
"Don't you realize how we have misunderstood her? Why, she hasn't been—been wicked at all! She simply saw she had made a mistake, and tried to undo it by going away—foolish, but so like Jacky, poor darling!—Mother! You don't mean to say you're not going to forgive her for running away?"
"Forgive?" repeated Kate wonderingly. Then she remembered that Jemima had never been a mother.
"It is Jacqueline who cannot forgive me," she explained, in her dull and lifeless voice.
Jemima gave up in despair. There was something about all this beyond her understanding.
In a few days a second letter came from Philip, postmarked New York, telling her that he had at last learned the where-abouts of his wife, and hoped soon to be going to her. He begged Kate to have patience, explaining that he was under promise not to reveal Jacqueline's hiding-place.
We must humor her now (he wrote). It is only because of the intervention of a friend she has found that she has consented to let me come to her presently. God knows what thoughts of us who love her and could not trust her have been in her head through these lonely weeks! We must give her time to get over them. She is not ready for us yet. You will understand, you who understand everything. Wait. And meanwhile comfort yourself as I do with the knowledge that she is safe, safe!
This letter puzzled Jemima almost unbearably, but she dared ask no question of her mother as to what had occurred. She was grateful to see that it at least roused the invalid to a show of interest. Kate took it into her languid hand and read it over twice, looking for some possible message for herself from Jacqueline, some little word of love that Jemima might have overlooked.
But finding nothing, she relapsed into the old listlessness.