An Ambitious Man

Never was a more undesired or unwelcome child born than her daughter

Alice, and the helpless infant shared with its father the resentful

anger which dominated her unwilling mother the wretched months before

its advent into earth life.

To be let alone and allowed to follow her own whims and desires, and

never to be crossed in any wish, was all Mrs Cheney asked of her

husband.

This role was one he had very willingly permitted her to pursue,

since with every passing week and month he found less and less to win

or bind him to his wife. Wretched as this condition of life was, it

might at least have settled into a monotonous calm, undisturbed by

strife, but for the molesting "sympathy" of the Baroness.

"Poor thing, here you are alone again," she would say on entering the

house where Mabel lounged or lolled, quite content with her situation

until the tone and words of her stepmother aroused a resentful

consciousness of being neglected. Again the Baroness would say: "I do think you are such a brave little darling to carry so smiling a

face about with all you have to endure." Or, "Very few wives would

bear what you bear and hide every vestige of unhappiness from the

world. You are a wonderful and admirable character in my eyes." Or,

"It seems so strange that your husband does not adore you--but men

are blind to the best qualities in women like you. I never hear Mr

Cheney praising other women without a sad and almost resentful

feeling in my heart, realising how superior you are to all of his

favourites." It was the insidious effect of poisoned flattery like

this, which made the Baroness a ruling power in the Cheney household,

and at the same time turned an already cold and unloving wife into a

jealous and nagging tyrant who rendered the young statesman's home

the most dreaded place on earth to him, and caused him to live away

from it as much as possible.

His only child, Alice, a frail, hysterical girl, devoid of beauty or

grace, gave him but little comfort or satisfaction. Indeed she was

but an added disappointment and pain in his life. Indulged in every

selfish thought by her mother and the Baroness, peevish and petulant,

always ailing, complaining and discontented, and still a victim to

the nervous disorders inherited from her mother, it was small wonder

that Senator Cheney took no more delight in the role of father than

he had found in the role of husband.

Alice was given every advantage which money could purchase. But her

delicate health had rendered systematic study of any kind impossible,

and her twentieth birthday found her with no education, with no use

of her reasoning or will powers, but with a complete and beautiful

wardrobe in which to masquerade and air her poor little attempts at

music, art, or conversation.