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.