Miss Field's amusement increased.

"That's Rachel's delusion. She knows very well that she hasn't been able
to manage him so far; but she's always full of fresh schemes for
managing him. She thinks, if she could once marry him to the right wife,
she and the wife between them could get the whip hand of him."

"Does she care for him?" said Meadows, bluntly.

Miss Field considered the question, and for the first time Meadows
perceived a grain of seriousness in her expression. But she emerged from
her meditations, smiling as usual.

"She'd be hard hit if anything very bad happened!"

"What could happen?"

"Well, of course they never know whether he won't marry to please
himself--produce somebody impossible!"

"And Lady Dunstable would suffer?"

Miss Field chuckled.

"I really believe you think her a kind of griffin--a stony creature with
a hole where her heart ought to be. Most of her friends do. Rachel, of
course, goes through life assuming that none of the disagreeable things
that happen to other people will ever happen to her. But if they ever
did happen--"