Kate heard her leave the room, and then stooped to kiss her grandson good-by. As she knelt there, tears raining fast on the tiny, unresponsive face in the coffin, she heard a step behind her. Thinking it was Jemima again, she did not look around. It was some moments later that a memory came to her, so clear as to be almost a vision; the memory of her dream in Frankfort--a man standing near, with bent shoulders and gray hair, but eyes as blue as a child's, as tender as a woman's, gazing down at her, smiling down.... Behind her sounded a slight cough. She lifted her head, suddenly trembling. "Who--who is there?" she whispered. A voice answered, very low--"Kate!--Kate!" Without another word, without a glance to make sure, she rose and went blindly into the arms that were ready for her. It was like coming home. AFTERWORD The Madam made one final appearance at Storm, no longer as Mrs. Kildare but as Mrs. Benoix, remaining only long enough to put affairs in order for resigning her stewardship of the estate. She had been married in the mountains to Dr. Benoix, over-ruling all his protests with a quiet, "Do you think I am going to run the risk of losing you again?" And indeed his protests were not very heartfelt. He was unaware until too late of the clause in Basil Kildare's will by which Kate's re-marriage would lose Storm to herself and her children. His chief objection was on the score of his health, and to it Kate had replied simply, "That in itself would be a reason for our marriage, if there were no other. Oh, Jacques, if you could know how I _love_ to be needed!" He made his last weak protest. "But I cannot bear to think of you wasting your loveliness, your charm, here among these uncouth people, you who should shine in courts and palaces!" She laughed softly. "I never have shone in any courts or palaces, goose! As for what you call my 'loveliness and charm'--they have been most valuable assets, I assure you, in dealing with my fellow-men." Her eyes danced with the daring that had made Kate Leigh's bellehood remembered beyond its time. "Why should beauty be wasted here more than elsewhere? There's less of it, and your mountaineers have eyes--though not very sound ones, poor dears!" She went down to Storm alone, partly because of that little sinister cough of her husband's, which she made light of but never forgot; partly because she wished to spare him the publicity of the nine days' wonder that their marriage was. But it was a publicity she need not have dreaded. Slowly enough, there had come about a great change in the feeling of the community toward Basil Kildare's widow; and when it was learned that she was at last relinquishing her great estate to marry the man for whom she had waited twenty years, the thing that had been scandal became suddenly romance. Kate woke one day to find herself a heroine.