An Ambitious Man

It was, despite its preservation of Nature's gifts, and despite its

forced smiles, the face of a selfish, cruel pessimist, disappointed

in her past and with no uplifting faith to brighten the future.

The Baroness had been the wife of Judge Lawrence a number of years,

before she relinquished her hopes of one day making Preston Cheney

respond to the passion which burned unquenched in her breast. It had

been with the idea of augmenting the interests of the man whom she

believed to be her future lover, that she aided and urged on her

husband in his efforts to procure place and honour for his son-in-

law.

It was this idea which caused her to widen the breach between wife

and husband by every subtle means in her power; and it was when this

idea began to lose colour and substance and drop away among the

wreckage of past hopes, that the Baroness ceased to compliment and

began to taunt Preston Cheney with his dependence upon his father-in-

law, and to otherwise goad and torment the unhappy man. And Preston

Cheney grew into the habit of staying anywhere longer than at home.

During the last ten years the Baroness had seemed to abandon all

thoughts of gallant adventure. When the woman who has found life and

pleasures only in coquetry and conquest is forced to relinquish these

delights, she becomes either very devout or very malicious.

The Baroness was devoid of religious feelings, and she became,

therefore, the most bitter and caustic of cynical critics at heart,

though she guarded her expression of these sentiments from policy.

Yet to Mabel she expressed herself freely, knowing that her listener

enjoyed no conversation so much as that of gossip and criticism. A

beautiful or attractive woman was the target for her most cruel

shafts of sarcasm, and indeed no woman was safe from her secret

malice save Mabel and Alice, over whom she found it a greater

pleasure to exercise her hypnotic control. For Alice, indeed, the

Baroness entertained a peculiar affection. The fact that she was the

child of the man to whom she had given the strongest passion of her

life, and the girl's lack of personal beauty, and her unfortunate

physical condition, awoke a medley of love, pity and protection in

the heart of this strange woman.