Channing lifted the little hand that was clutching his to his lips. "This is good-by," he said hoarsely. "I'm sorry--Your mother will explain.--I must go away." "But you're coming back soon?" He shook his head. "Why, but--I'll see you again before you go, won't I?" Her voice was piteous. "Mr. Channing has given me his word," said her mother, "to make no further attempt to communicate with you." The girl took a long breath. Her chin lifted. "Oh! So you are still going to treat me as a little girl?" she said. "That's a mistake, Mother!" Without any further effort to detain Channing, she walked to the stairs and up them, her chin still high. Channing looked back once from the door. Mrs. Kildare, standing in the center of the hall, bowed to him gravely, as a queen might in dismissing an audience. Jemima, on guard at the foot of the staircase, also bowed in stately fashion. But halfway up, Jacqueline paused and turned; and as his miserable gaze met hers, she distinctly winked at him. CHAPTER XXXII More and more, as the days passed, Kate congratulated herself on having taken Jacqueline's affairs in hand before any harm was done. Startled out of her own preoccupation by Jemima's discovery of how matters stood between Jacqueline and the author, she continued to watch the younger girl narrowly; but she saw no signs of secret grief, nor even of wounded pride. The girl had never been more radiant, her cheeks a-glow, her eyes so soft and lustrous that sometimes her mother's grew dim at sight of them. She remembered a time when her own mirror had shown her just such a look of brooding revery. "Channing has done nothing more than wake her womanhood," thought the mother. "And now, now it is Philip's turn!" Philip, since his return from the mountains, spent more time than ever at Storm. Kate noted with satisfaction the added gentleness of his manner with Jacqueline, and threw them together as much as possible. Jemima, too, seemed to have a great deal of time to give her younger sister in those days. Between them all, Jacqueline was rarely alone; but she had no longer any wish to be alone. She avoided the Ruin now, and took no more long rides about the country, except with Kate. She clung to her mother with the persistency of a child who is recovering from an illness. Jemima had taken it upon herself to watch the mails, and reported that there were no letters for Jacqueline. Channing evidently intended to keep his word implicitly. Jacqueline had received her mother's explanation of his conduct quite calmly. "Let's not discuss it, Mummy," she begged, flushing a little. "Of course if Mr. Charming was already married, that way, he couldn't ask me to marry him. I understand." She attempted one little apology for him. "Geniuses aren't quite--quite like other men, and they ought to be judged differently, Mummy."