An Ambitious Man

More than two decades had passed since Preston Cheney followed the

dictates of his ambition and married Mabel Lawrence.

Many of his early hopes and desires had been realised during these

years. He had attained to high political positions; and honour and

wealth were his to enjoy. Yet Senator Cheney, as he was now known,

was far from a happy man. Disappointment was written in every

lineament of his face, restlessness and discontent spoke in his every

movement, and at times the spirit of despair seemed to look from the

depths of his eyes.

To a man of any nobility of nature, there can be small satisfaction

in honours which he knows are bought with money and bribes; and to

the proud young American there was the additional sting of knowing

that even the money by which his honours were purchased was not his

own.

It was the second Mrs Lawrence (still designated as the "Baroness" by

her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the

constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in-

law. In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and

designing nature, the Baroness found it possible to make Preston's

life a torture, without revealing her weapons of warfare to her

husband; indeed, without allowing him to even smell the powder, while

she still kept up a constant small fire upon the helpless enemy.

Owing to the fact that Mabel had come as completely under the

hypnotic influence of the Baroness as the first Mrs Lawrence had been

during her lifetime, Preston was subjected to a great deal more of

her persecutions than would otherwise have been possible. Mabel was

never happier than when enjoying the companionship of her new mother;

a condition of things which pleased the Judge as much as it made his

son-in-law miserable.

With a malicious adroitness possible only to such a woman as the

second Mrs Lawrence, she endeared herself to Mrs Cheney, by a

thousand flattering and caressing ways, and by a constant exhibition

of sympathy, which to a weak and selfish nature is as pleasing as it

is distasteful to the proud and strong. And by this inexhaustible

flow of sympathetic feeling, she caused the wife to drift farther and

farther away from her husband's influence, and to accuse him of all

manner of shortcomings and faults which had not suggested themselves

to her own mind.

Mabel had not given or demanded a devoted love when she married

Preston Cheney. She was quite satisfied to bear his name, and do the

honours of his house, and to be let alone as much as possible. It

was the name, not the estate, of wifehood she desired; and motherhood

she had accepted with reluctance and distaste.