She could not move him, neither with tears nor with kisses. The jailor came.
As they led him away, her voice followed him so that the grim place rang with it! "Your boy shall be mine till you come for us both. Jacques, I'll wait, I'll wait!"
Benoix was right. The best lawyers to be had could not keep him from the penitentiary. The judge, a just and troubled man who had known Kildare from boyhood, laid what emphasis he could on the uncertainty of the case, the probability that Benoix had fought in self-defense. The jury would have none of it. Popular prejudice had transformed the master of Storm into a hero, a martyr to the unwritten law, who had given his life to defend the sanctity of his home. It did not help the accused that he was a stranger in the State, reputed to be an atheist, had not even a decent, pronounceable English name, was—of all things!—a Frenchman.
"A Creole American," corrected the accused, quietly. It was his one word in his own behalf.
Kate was in the courtroom when the jury brought in its verdict. She rose to receive it as if she were the accused, and more than one member of the jury, glancing at her, pursed virtuous lips.
The sentence was a life term in the penitentiary.
Mrs. Kildare, now famous and infamous throughout the country, made one more public appearance, this time in the church where she had been christened, confirmed, and married. She did not wear mourning, but her face was like marble against the bright color of her dress. The congregation began to whisper. She had brought her two children to be christened.
She was not quite alone. Two friends entered with her and stood at her side: her mother, and a young man named Thorpe, who had been the least among her girlhood adorers, and was the first to offer his support in her disgrace. It was he, as godfather, who spoke the children's names: "Jemima" for the elder, and for the younger, "Jacqueline Benoix."
At this there was a rustle throughout the church. Was it possible that she was actually naming her child for the condemned lover? The old minister's voice faltered, almost stopped, in his dismay. Afterwards, she had to brave the blank, frozen glances of people who had known her since her birth, and who now, it seemed, knew her no longer.
Not until that moment did Kate realize what interpretation the world might put upon her act of public loyalty to the man who had gone for her sake into a living death.