The Heart of Rachael

And through all her adventures she looked calmly, confidently, and

with conscious enjoyment for a husband. She flirted a little, and

danced and swam and drove and played golf and tennis a great deal,

but she never lost sight for an instant of the serious business of

life. Money she must have--it was almost as essential to her as

air--and money she could only secure through a marriage.

The young Englishman who was her first choice, in her twentieth

year, had every qualification in the world. When he died, two or

three months before the wedding-day, Rachael's mother was fond of

saying in an aside to close friends that the girl's heart was

broken. Rachael, lovely in her black, went down to stay with

Stephen's mother, and for several weeks was that elderly lady's

greatest comfort in life. Silent and serious, her manner the

perfection of quiet grief, only Rachael herself knew how little

the memory of Stephen interfered with her long reveries as she

took his collies about in the soft autumn fogs. Only Rachael knew

how the sight of Trecastle Hall, the horses, the servants, and the

park filled her heart with despair. She might have been Lady

Trecastle! All this might so easily have been her own!

She had loved Stephen, of course, she told herself; loving, with

Rachael, simply meant a willingness to accept and to give. But

love was of course a luxury; she was after the necessities of

life. Well, she had played and lost, but she could play again. So

she went to the Pomeroys' for the winter, and in the spring was

brought back to London by her father's sudden death.

Gerald Fairfax's life insurance gave his widow a far more secured

income than he had ever given his wife. It was microscopic, to be

sure, but Clara Fairfax was a practised economist. The ladies

settled in Paris, and Rachael was seriously considering a French

marriage when, by the merest chance, in the street one day, a

small homesick girl clutched at her thin black skirt, and sent her

an imploring smile. Rachael, looking graciously down from under

the shade of her frilly black parasol, recognized the little

Breckenridge girl, obviously afflicted with a cold and

lonesomeness and strangeness. Enslaving the French nurse with

three perfectly pronounced sentences, Rachael went home with the

clinging Carol, put her to bed, cheered her empty little interior

with soup, soothed her off to sleep, and was ready to meet her

crazed and terrified father with a long lecture on the care of

young children, when, after an unavoidable afternoon of business,

he came back to his hotel.