Without another word, the girl turned and went out of the room. Kate hurried after her. "Wait, daughter, I haven't finished. There are some things I must tell you. Where are you going?"
"To tell Jacqueline."
Kate cried out, "No, not Jacqueline! She's too young. Wait, please—"
She followed up the stairs, commanding, pleading. "Wait! I prefer to tell her myself. Please, please! Jemima, do you hear me? I insist."
Jemima never paused. "My sister must know the truth. I owe that much to my father. Young or not, Jacqueline is a Kildare," she said stonily at the door of her room; and shut her mother out into the world of people who were not Kildares.
All that morning the Madam, greatly to the bewilderment of her household, wandered about the house in utter idleness, never stopping; saying to herself reasonably, "I must find something to do. Now is the time to be doing something;" wondering with that helpless, childlike egotism of people in great distress, how the sun happened to be shining so brightly out-of-doors, the birds singing quite as usual.
Invariably her footsteps came back to the door of the room that had been the nursery. It was there the two tiny cribs had stood, the rocking-horse, the doll's house, the little desks at which her babies had lisped their first lessons. It was there they murmured together now through the endless morning, discussing her fate, sitting in final judgment upon their mother.
She could not keep away from the door. Sometimes she pressed against it soundlessly, as if the passionate throbbing of her heart might send a wave through to reach them, to help them understand. How else could she help them to understand? Only by blackening now the memory of a father who was not there to defend himself, a father whom she herself had taught them to respect and to love.
It was an expedient that did not once occur to Kate Kildare.
"My little girls!" she whispered to herself. "My poor little frightened babies!"