The rest followed. Rachael liked Clarence, finding it agreeable
that he knew how to dress, how to order a dinner, tip servants,
and take care of a woman in a crowd. His family was one of the
oldest in America, and he was rich. She was sorry that Billy's
mother was living, but then one couldn't have everything, and,
after all, she was married again, which seemed to mitigate the
annoyance. Rachael said to herself that this was a wiser marriage
than the proposed one with poor Stephen: Stephen had been a wild,
romantic boy, full of fresh passion and dazed with exultant
dreams; Clarence was a man, longing less for moonshine and roses
and the presence of his beloved one than for a gracious,
distinguished woman who would take her place before the world as
mistress of his home and guardian of his child.
She had sometimes doubted her power to make Stephen happy--
Stephen, who talked with all a boy's heavenly shyness of long days
tramping the woods and long nights over the fire, of little sons
and daughters romping in the Trecastle gardens; but she entered
into her marriage with Clarence Breckenridge with entire self-
confidence. She had been struggling more or less definitely all
her life toward just such a position as this; it was a
comparatively easy matter to fill it, now that she had got it.
Carol she considered a decided asset. The child adored her, and
her services to Carol were so much good added to the beauty,
charm, and wisdom that she brought into the bargain. That Clarence
could ask more in the way of beauty, wisdom, and charm was not
conceivable; Rachael knew her own value too well to have any
doubts on that score.
And had her husband been a strong man, her dignified and ripened
loveliness must inevitably have won him. She stood ready to be
won. She held to her bond in all generosity. What heart and soul
and body could do for him was his to claim. She did not love him,
but she did not need love's glamour to show her what her exact
value to him might be; what was her natural return for all her
marriage gave her.
But quick-witted and cold-blooded as she was, she could not see
that Clarence was actually a little afraid of her. He had been too
rich all his life to count his money as an argument in his favor,
and although he was not clever he knew Rachael did not love him,
and hardly supposed that she ever could.
He felt with paternal blindness that she had married him partly
for the child's sake, and returned to the companionship of his
daughter with a real sense of relief.