Jemima lifted up her head, and made her confession of renewed faith, there in the dark. "But I'd rather thank you, Mother!"
It was Kate's first dose of the happiness the specialist had prescribed.
After a long pause, the voice spoke again out of the dark. "Mother—I want you to marry Dr. Benoix. Do you understand? We owe it to him—all of us. I want you to marry him."
"Ah!" whispered Kate. "If I only could!"
"You've not given up? Oh, but you mustn't give up! He shall be found! I'll find him myself, and bring him back to you, because it was I who sent him away." (Kate smiled faintly at the egotism, but she did not correct it.) "Oh, Mother, put your will into it!" urged the girl, leaning over her. "You know you've never failed in anything you've put your will into."
"I? Never failed?" repeated Kate, in bitter mockery.
"Now you're thinking of Jacqueline and Philip. That wasn't an error of will, but of judgment.—This time, I'm judging."
Boast that it was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her abilities), somehow it put new heart into Kate, made her realize that she had at hand a staff to lean upon, a counselor who, despite her youth, possessed a certain wisdom that her mother could never hope to gain.
"Oh, Jemmy," she sighed as one equal to another, "if you had been in my place, what would you have done about Jacqueline?"
Mrs. Thorpe took the matter into consideration. At length she pronounced gravely, "If I had been in your place, there never would have been a Jacqueline"; which ended the conversation for that night.