"Is she?" Doris's eyes pursued the two distant figures in the park.

"You'd think, for instance, that Lord Dunstable was just a cipher? Not
at all. He's the real authority here, and when he puts his foot down
Rachel always gives in. But of course she's stood in the way of his
career."

Doris shrank a little from these indiscretions. But she could not keep
her curiosity out of her eyes, and Miss Field smilingly answered it.

"She's absorbed him so! You see he watches her all the time. She's like
an endless play to him. He really doesn't care for anything else--he
doesn't want anything else. Of course they're very rich. But he might
have done something in politics, if she hadn't been so much more
important than he. And then, naturally, she's made enemies--powerful
enemies. Her friends come here of course--her old cronies--the people
who can put up with her. They're devoted to her. And the young
people--the very modern ones--who think nice manners 'early Victorian,'
and like her rudeness for the sake of her cleverness. But the
rest!--What do you think she did at one of these parties last year?"

Doris could not help wishing to know.

"She took a fancy to ask a girl near here--the daughter of a clergyman,
a great friend of Lord Dunstable's, to come over for the Sunday. Lord
Dunstable had talked of the girl, and Rachel's always on the look-out
for cleverness; she hunts it like a hound! She met the young woman too
somewhere, and got the impression--I can't say how--that she would 'go.'
So on the Saturday morning she went over in her pony-carriage--broke in