His heart contracted with sudden sympathy. He knew only too well "how it was." It seemed to him that lately his life was one long conspiracy against Fate to find Kate Kildare alone. Abroad, the eyes of the world seemed always turned upon them; at home she was surrounded by an impregnable barrier of daughters. On the rare occasions when he did manage to achieve the coveted _solitude à deux_, their talk was of farming, of the parish, of business, and in the end always of his father, his father. Her dependence upon him, her affection for him, was evident, but there was a curiously impersonal, almost absent-minded quality about it that sometimes chilled Philip and his budding hopes. When she spoke out her inmost thoughts, even when she took his hand or laid her arm across his shoulders with the impulsive, caressing gestures that were as common to her as to Jacqueline, he had the feeling that she was thinking of another man. Philip was well fitted to understand Jacqueline just then. "My dear," he said quietly, "are you in love with Mr. Channing?" The question took her by surprise. She paled, and then the lovely rose came over her face again in a hot flood. "Oh, yes, _yes_, Phil!" she cried eagerly. "Do come and ride beside me, and let me tell you all about it. I've been wanting dreadfully to tell somebody who would understand. You're _such_ a comfortable sort of person." Philip's greatest gift was the art of listening. He employed it now, turning to her a glance steady and encouraging, concealing the anxiety that gnawed at his mind, why he could not say. The natural priest is as intuitive perhaps as the natural woman. She took him into her confidence fully, concealing nothing. He learned about their daily meetings, either at the Ruin, or if Farwell happened to be absent, at Holiday Hill. She told him of their long automobile rides together, while she was supposed to be off exercising some of the horses; of the book he was beginning to write with her assistance; ("I inspire it," she explained gravely); of his belief in her own future career as a singer. "He's going to help me, to introduce me to singers and teachers and--impresarios, I think they're called. He's going to make mother send me abroad to study, first. He says it's wicked to keep me shut up here away from life. All artists have got to see a great deal of life, you know, if they're to amount to anything. Oh, isn't it wonderful?" she broke off, "that such a man as that should ever have noticed me at all?" Philip, glancing at the radiant young face, did not find it altogether wonderful. "I suppose he makes love to you?" he asked.