"You accused me of deceit, of a lie. You!" Her voice was curiously thick, and she spoke with great effort. "Ah! There have been bad women in this family of yours, my girl, but never before, I think, a dishonorable one." Jacqueline recoiled from her. "Dishonorable! And my daughter! Stealing a good man's name to cover her own shame. How dared you, how _dared_ you?" She began to stride up and down the room, the words pouring from her lips at white heat. Kate Kildare was one of the people whose quiet serenity covers a great power of anger, all the more forceful for being kept within bounds. Rarely indeed had she allowed it to force the flood-gates; and Jacqueline cowered away from her, staring, hardly believing it was herself to whom this cold fury of speech was addressed. "Philip, left to my care by his father, Philip for whom I wanted everything good in life even more than for my own children! Oh, how dared you? So devoted to us, so grateful to me--how could he refuse? What chance had he? Even if he had known--" She turned on Jacqueline with a sudden gleam of hope. "_Did_ he know? Were you honest enough to tell him?" The girl gasped. "How could I?" The blood came up over her face in a painful flood and her head drooped. "But--but I think he--understood. He--seemed to." The other gave a short, hard laugh. "Not likely! Men, even such men as Philip, don't marry the--Magdalens, however much they pity them. Unless somebody makes them, as I made Philip.--Oh, my God! And I thought he was too modest to ask for you! I thought I was offering him the best I had!" A faint voice interrupted her. "Did you--offer me to Philip?" If Kate was aware of the cruelty of her words, she was beyond compunction just then. "Yes! Offered you?--Good Heavens, I insisted upon it! Oh, what a fool I have been, what a blind, blundering fool! Now I understand why he was so queer, so quiet.--Taking advantage of his devotion to shunt my disgrace onto him--Jacques' son!" At last her anger exhausted her, and she sank into a chair, quite limp and silent. She did not know just when Jacqueline left the house, had been only vaguely aware of a horse galloping down the hill recklessly, as Jacqueline, like her father before her, was wont to gallop. In the reaction of emotion, she felt rather ill, and had to struggle with a physical weakness that threatened to overcome her. Some time later a servant, entering to announce supper, found her there in the dark, and receiving no reply to her summons, ran back to the kitchen in some alarm. Big Liza, with the wisdom of the simple, herself brought a tray of nourishing food, and stood over her mistress firmly while she ate, obediently enough, but tasting nothing of what she put into her mouth.