An hour later, before his courage had a chance to fail him, he rode to Storm and asked Jacqueline to marry him. The girl put up her lips simply as a child. "I'd love to marry you, Phil, darling. How sweet of you to ask me! And now," she said eagerly, "let's go and tell Mummy. She'll be so pleased!" CHAPTER XLI So there was presently another wedding at Storm, or rather in the church at Storm; and Kate could have sung with the Psalmist: "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy ways, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Jemima, who spent as much time as her husband would spare her at Storm, in the interval between the formal engagement and the wedding, tried conscientiously to summon up courage to end in some way a situation that seemed to her impossible. But her hints and innuendoes, broad as she dared make them, had no effect upon the radiant satisfaction of her mother, nor upon Philip himself, hedged around as he was with a sort of calm serenity, an uplifted, detached air, which she had not sufficient experience to recognize as the elation that goes with martyrdom. She began to wonder if after all she had been mistaken in Philip's feeling for her mother. He seemed quite content, even happy. Nevertheless, there was something about him that awed Jemima a little, made her usual frankness with him quite impossible. With Jacqueline, however, she had no such feeling of awe, and she watched her sister with amazed impatience. Her infatuation for Channing had been a thing inexplicable to the fastidious Jemima; even more inexplicable was the ease with which she appeared to forget him for another lover. Much of the girl's gaiety had returned to her. She entered into the wedding preparations with the eagerness of a child playing with a new toy. She spoke of Philip constantly, was always watching for his arrival, greeted him when he came with the utmost enthusiasm, clinging to him, sitting on the arm of his chair, kissing him, regardless of onlookers. True, she was quite as demonstrative with her mother, with James Thorpe, even with Jemima, when permitted; but, as the older girl said to herself in distaste, she was not going to marry them! One day, shortly before the wedding, when Jemima arrived at Storm she was met by her mother at the door with finger upon lip. "Hush! Jacky is singing again," whispered Kate, delightedly. It was the first time the girl had been to the piano for weeks. The two stood and listened. She sang to herself very softly, unconscious of an audience, one of the Songs of the Hill: "A little winding road Goes over the hill to the plain-- A little road that crosses the plain And comes to the hill again."