Kildares of Storm

"This," murmured a voice into the ear of Professor Thorpe, "is the real thing at last! Everything so far has been a rather crude imitation of New York. I am disappointed in Lexi...

Kate, at this juncture, was filling her days to the brim with work, turning to it as to a tried friend, tested in many a crisis. Her recipe for avoiding thought was extreme phys...

There stood, in the ravine which separated Storm hill from the property that had formerly belonged to Jacques Benoix, a roofless, tumbledown stone cabin which had been from chil...

Jemima's opposition had the effect, usual with determined natures, of crystallizing Mrs. Kildare's purpose, and she watched with impatience a situation that appeared rather slow...

It was a sore and weary author who at length, having postponed the inevitable as long as possible, crept into the bunk where his host and the two sons slept audibly, with Benoix...

Jacqueline had presently another confidante, who came to her by chance; not Kate, still absorbed in her readjustment to life without Jacques Benoix, and not Jemima, even more ab...

Philip did his best, somewhat hampered by the fact that the girl regarded his enforced chaperonage as a joke, and flirted with Channing quite brazenly and openly under his very...

Channing began to be aware, despite the hospitality and comfort which were provided for him in overflowing measure, that he was seeing very little of Jacqueline under her mother...

Years before, when gentle Mrs. Leigh turned her back forever upon the beloved Bluegrass town of her youth, and came to spend the remaining years of her life at Storm--for with a...

Jacqueline had never quite thought out to herself the reason for Channing's unexplained disappearance. It was a subject upon which her mind dwelt constantly whenever she was alo...

"What is the use of buying an expensive trousseau? Mag sews quite well enough, and anyway I have more clothes now than I know what to do with," she argued practically. "If you t...

The day came when Basil, summoned from the field to his wife's bedside, foundered his best hunter in his haste to see his son. The doctor met him at the door.

The fact that, while the countryside had been astir for weeks with rumors of Jacques Benoix' impending release, her daughters were quite unaware of them was evidence of the Mada...

The night after the wedding proved to be for Kate Kildare one of the _nuits blanches_ that were becoming common with her in the past few weeks. For many years the cultivated hab...

The night before Jacques Benoix' release found Kate Kildare lying sleepless within sight of a grim gray wall that blocked the end of the street upon which her window opened. A g...

Late summer in Kentucky; deep, umbrageous woodlands fragrant with fern, dreaming noons, shimmering in the heat, with the locust drowsily shrilling; warm and silver nights, made...

Kate stood gazing down at the grandchild she had so longed for, Jacqueline's baby; an old, wrinkled, strangely wise little face, as befitted one who had solved with his first br...

More and more, as the days passed, Kate congratulated herself on having taken Jacqueline's affairs in hand before any harm was done. Startled out of her own preoccupation by Jem...

On the rare occasions when the mistress of Storm sat idle in her eyrie, her household--children, negroes, even the motley assortment of dogs that claimed her for their own--had...

It was an epoch-making afternoon for Jacqueline, and not the least part of the enchantment was her first experience of automobiling. The wheezing, coughing little equipage known...

Jacqueline had waited all that day for news from Channing, disappointed, more than a little humiliated, to think that he had failed where she had not, but making every allowance...

Kate stepped down into the porch with outstretched hands. "I am so glad it is you, Phil dear. You must have felt me wishing for you. Come, come in, boy! You don't have half enou...

If Mrs. Kildare's eyes had been of their usual observant keenness in those days, she could not have failed to notice the change in Jacqueline; a new loveliness, a sudden burstin...

It was a very trivial and unimportant thing, to Jemima's thinking, which presently lifted Kate out of her languor into action once more. Big Liza, entering timidly one morning,...

And so Mrs. Kildare had her second interview with a man who wanted, not herself, but one of her children. It made her feel very old, as if she were becoming a looker-on at life,...

As soon as they were alone, Jemima demanded explanations of her mother. "What has happened to Jacky? Why, she's all eyes! I never saw such a change! Her smile makes you want to...

Kate's thoughts, too, were busy with her young adventurers into the world, throughout a wakeful night; only her anxieties did not concern themselves with Jacqueline. A nature so...

It was so rarely that the Madam overslept herself that her servants had no precedent to follow in the matter. The housewoman, who finally entered on tiptoe to remove the placidl...

It was not long after this that Kate woke to a realization of the sacrifices her daughter was making to remain at Storm, and sent her back post-haste to her patient, neglected h...

"No, I'm not," she answered frankly. "I suppose it does belong to him, as a matter of fact. But the whole purpose of the Civic League I formed among the village negroes was to k...

The fact was that Philip, in his double capacity of priest and of bodyguard to the household of his liege lady, had been for some time aware of a thing that troubled him deeply....

A fleeting, illusory hint of spring appeared for the moment in that street known among all the world's great avenues--the Champs Elysées, the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter d...

Philip's pursuit of his wife came to have for him, before it was done, something of the strangeness of a nightmare, one of those endless dreams that come to fever patients, fill...

It seemed to Kate presently, as she ran, that the wind was a friend, trying to help her. The driving rain on her face cleared her brain. Even the lightning was a friend, for wit...

On the gallery at Storm stood two anxious girls with eyes fixed upon the big juniper-tree less patiently than the eyes of the waiting dogs. Their mother was invisible, but the p...

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 acco...

There was never a stranger honeymoon than that of Kate and Basil Kildare. It began with a view-halloa. It ended ... how should happy hunting end except with the death of something?

A rather watery sun was just showing over the tree-tops when Mrs. Kildare dismissed at her door the automobile she had commandeered, hoping to slip into the house unnoticed. But...

As the winter closed in--it was one of the open, keen, out-of-door winters which have done their share to make the dwellers on the great central plateau of Kentucky so sturdy a...

It was a part of Channing's new policy of caution with regard to Jacqueline that took him occasionally to Storm in the rôle of casual caller, especially now that the older girl...

It was aromatic ammonia, and she spluttered over it and stopped crying. Then he forced some between Channing's lips; and presently the wounded man's eyes opened, to Jacqueline's...

She was disappointed to find that Philip, despite his telegram, was not at the station to meet her, but had sent instead a wagon which, its driver explained, was to take her as...

The weeks that followed were the most contented of Kate Kildare's life, despite her loneliness in her great house, with no companion except the negro servants and Mag's baby. Sh...

Along a pleasant Kentucky road that followed nature rather than art in its curves and meanderings, straying beside a brook awhile before it decided to cross, lingering in cool,...

As if Philip's wish had materialized her, it was Jemima herself who met Jacqueline and Channing at the Storm station late that night; Jemima, fully equipped for the occasion, am...

The older Kate, looking from her eyrie at that other self of hers as at some stranger she had once known and pitied, saw a girl who wore her secret in her face, careless of who...

Philip, true to his promise to himself, deliberately set about the business of making friends with Jacqueline's lover. He found the matter less difficult than he had expected. C...

The peace of that quiet time with her lover remained with Kate through the days that followed, even as he had intended it should, guarding her like an armor from the seething ex...

The old hall of Storm, with its memories of many a wild festivity, had never served as background for a prettier sight than Jemima and Jacqueline Kildare, coming shyly down the...

She rubbed her eyes, yawning. "Let me alone, Phil! I'm half dead with sleep.--Heavens, where am I? Why are you so cross? Oh, Phil," she gasped, memory returning in a flood. "How...

It was some time before her mother began to do much credit to Jemima's reputation as a nurse. The nature of her illness, if illness it could be called, was baffling. She had nei...

Kate made the long drive back to Storm, which was to have been her wedding journey, with Philip beside her. They rarely spoke. Conversation was never necessary between them, and...