But the girl was under her mother's eye all day long, excited as Jemima herself over the preparations, stitching with unwonted diligence on the bridal finery, running errands, seeing visitors, happy and busy and asking nothing better than to be with Kate or her sister whatever they were about. It was a little touching to both, as if the madcap girl had suddenly realized that the old companionship of home was about to be broken up, and wanted to have as much of it as possible. There was no hour in the full days when she might have seen Channing, even had she wished. And Jemima continued to watch her mail with a hawk's eye. Channing's word of honor not to communicate with the girl would have seemed, in itself, an insufficient safeguard to Kate, had not her knowledge of men reassured her. She believed that her daughter was not the type to arouse more than a passing interest in such a man as Channing. Her beauty, her flattered response to his attentions, her fresh, unsophisticated charm of gaiety, might well appeal to him for a time, adding the fillip of the unaccustomed to a jaded palate. But it was an appeal that must be constantly renewed, that would not outlast any continued absence. She believed that Channing, while he would accept with eagerness whatever good thing came to his hand, was too indolent and too self-centered to overcome many obstacles in the pursuit of a fancy. Jacqueline herself was reassuring, too. Her manner of receiving the news of Channing's perfidy had showed her no stranger to the Kildare pride. She seemed to regard the affair as a closed incident. "Do you think," said Kate proudly to Philip, "that my daughter would care to have anything to do with the man, now that she knows his utter unworthiness?" "It is just possible that she was attracted to Channing by other qualities than worthiness," commented Philip. "Weakness, for instance. Women have been attracted by weakness before this." "Phil, Phil," Kate laughed, "you are an 'elderly young man,' as Jacky says! Almost as elderly and wise as our Jemima. Stop croaking and come and see the new wedding garments Mag is putting on my old chairs." She flung an affectionate arm about him, and led him indoors, his heart beating too hard and suddenly to make further speech possible just then.--Yet there was much he wished to say, and not about Jacqueline. These wedding preparations stirred certain yearnings in his breast, certain eager hopes. It seemed to him that his lady was warmer lately, more approachable, more present, somehow. Was she, too, stirred by all this thought and talk of marriage? It was hard to wait patiently. Yet he was too good a horseman to rush his fences. Mag on her knees, her mouth full of pins, was cleverly fitting slips of gay-flowered cretonne over the masculine chairs and sofas, assisted, or at least not hindered, by Jacqueline.