Jemima, alarmed, continued to protest; at last ran to the telephone and called Dr. Jones to her assistance. Meanwhile Kate, scolded at, fussed over, but in the end helped by her cook, got into out-door clothes; and before Doctor Jones was on his way to Storm, she had taken the road for the village.
She sat erect in her surrey, pale, but scorning the proffered arm of Jemima, driven by a proud and anxious coachman behind the quietest pair of horses in the stable; and people as she passed stared at her with utter amaze—with more; with a delight that rose in some cases to the point of tears. For the first time, Kate realized that she had won something besides respect and dependence and fear from her realm. She had won love. The realization pierced through her apathy. A faint color came into her cheeks. More than once, as she paused to exchange greetings with some beaming and incoherent acquaintance, her own lips were tremulous.
"Why are they so glad to see me, Jemmy?" she asked once. "Did they think I was very ill?"
Her daughter nodded, not trusting her own voice. It seemed as if a miracle had occurred before her eyes.
"Well, I've fooled them," smiled Kate, drawing into her lungs a great breath of the keen, rain-swept air that was bringing new life into a world done with winter.
She asked one other question as they drove. "Jemmy, what does the neighborhood think about—Jacqueline?"
Jemima explained that she had allowed the impression to go abroad that Philip and Jacqueline had taken advantage of an opportunity to go to Europe on a belated honeymoon journey.
She did not say, because she did not know, that the countryside, always with an interested eye upon its betters, had connected the extreme suddenness of this journey with Philip's vanished father, picturing to itself touching death-bed scenes, and eleventh-hour repentances. Remembering the Madam's brief illness at the time of Dr. Benoix' disappearance, the neighborhood had connected her present illness also with its romantic imaginings; with the result that what was left of its disapproval had been swallowed up in a sudden and quite human wave of sympathy for that faithful woman and the man she loved.
When they reached a neat little cottage in the portion of the village devoted to white workingmen's homes, Kate allowed herself to be assisted to the door, where she dismissed her daughter, telling her to return in half an hour.
"I must see Mahaly alone," was her only answer to Jemima's uneasy protests.