But her tongue refused her bidding. She was hypnotized by the realization of her own utter folly. To have left such a discovery to chance! To have hoped that some impossible luck would keep her daughters in ignorance of her tragedy--and this in a rural community where nothing is ever forgotten, where every sordid detail of its one great scandal had been for years a household word! The two stared at each other. Slowly the ruthless inquiry in the girl's eyes changed into fear, into a very piteous dismay. "Can't you deny--anything?" she whispered at last. "Mother! say it isn't so. I'll believe you." She began to cry; not weakly with hidden face, but as a man cries, painful tears rolling unheeded down her cheeks, her shoulders heaving with hard sobs. It came to Kate that never since her babyhood had she seen this child of hers in tears. She held out her arms, infinitely touched. "My dear, my baby!" she said. "Come here to Mother." But the girl avoided her touch with a sort of shrinking. "All these years we've been trusting you, loving you, almost worshiping you--and you were _that sort_! Oh, Mother! Your husband's murderer--and his son coming and going about our house as if he were our brother. Those women said something about you and Philip, too,--but never mind that now. Will you tell me the truth, please? Before my father's death, you and--that man--loved each other?" "Yes, Jemima, but--" The girl silenced her. "And now that he is coming out of prison, you will go on--being lovers?" Her mother answered quietly, "I shall marry him, dear, if that is what you mean." Without another word, the girl turned and went out of the room. Kate hurried after her. "Wait, daughter, I haven't finished. There are some things I must tell you. Where are you going?" "To tell Jacqueline." Kate cried out, "No, not Jacqueline! She's too young. Wait, please--" She followed up the stairs, commanding, pleading. "Wait! I prefer to tell her myself. Please, please! Jemima, do you hear me? I insist." Jemima never paused. "My sister must know the truth. I owe that much to my father. Young or not, Jacqueline is a Kildare," she said stonily at the door of her room; and shut her mother out into the world of people who were not Kildares. All that morning the Madam, greatly to the bewilderment of her household, wandered about the house in utter idleness, never stopping; saying to herself reasonably, "I must find something to do. Now is the time to be doing something;" wondering with that helpless, childlike egotism of people in great distress, how the sun happened to be shining so brightly out-of-doors, the birds singing quite as usual.