But when there is a soul behind the matchless eyes, and a keen wit

animates the lovely mouth, and when the indication of the white

forehead is not belied, it is a nice question whether great beauty

be a gift of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room

or in any room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge

without a pang; her supremacy was beyond all argument or dispute.

And yet there was neither complacency nor content in the lovely

face; it wore its usual expression of arrogant amusement at a

somewhat tiresome world.

Both in the instant impression it made, and under closest

analysis, Rachael Breckenridge's beauty stood all tests. Her

colorless skin was as pure as ivory, her dark-blue eyes,

surrounded by that faint sooty color that only Irish eyes know,

were set far apart and evenly arched by perfect brows. Her white

forehead was low and broad, the lustreless black hair was swept

back from it with almost startling simplicity, the line of her

mouth was long, her lips a living red. Her figure, as she sat

balancing carelessly on a chair-arm, showed the exquisite curves

of a woman slow to develop, who is approaching the height of her

beauty, and from the tip of her white shoe to the poppies on her

soft straw hat there was that distinction in her clothing that

betrayed her to be one of the few who may be always individual yet

always in the fashion. She was a woman, quick, dynamic, impatient,

who vitalized the very atmosphere in which she moved, challenging

life by endless tests and measures, scornful of admiration, and

ambitious, even in this recognized ambition of finding herself

beautiful, prominent, and a rich man's wife, for something further

and greater, she knew not what. She was an important figure in

this world of hers; her word was authority, her decree law. Never

was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so biting, or satire

so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a target for her

glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to arouse in

her anything but doubt and scorn.

"I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now, in the

astonishingly rich voice that seemed to fill the words with new

meaning. "And I won't allow the Infant to have any--no, Billy, you

shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides,

you've just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds--

it's six o'clock. We're looking for Clarence--we seek a husband

fond, a parent dear--"

"Clarence hasn't showed up here at all to-day," said Peter

Pomeroy, stretching back comfortably in his chair, appreciative

eyes upon Clarence's wife. "Shame, too, for we had some good golf.

Course is in splendid condition. George beat me three up and two

to play, but I don't bear any malice. Here I am signing for his

highball."




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