And then, after both girls had danced through one London season in
different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, and
then--by accident--her father, leaving behind him an avalanche of
unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast fortune was
engulfed.

Hard years followed for Rachel. She ate the bread of carefulness in the
houses of poor relations not of high degree, with whom her parents had
quarrelled when they had made their money and began to entertain social
ambitions. She learned what it was to be the person of least importance
in families of no importance. She essayed to teach, and failed. She had
no real education. She made desperate struggles for independence, and
learned how others failed besides herself. She left her relations and
their bitter bread and came to London, and struggled with those who
struggled, and saw how Temptation spreads her net for bleeding feet.
Because she loved Hester she accepted from her half her slender
pin-money. Hester had said, "If I were poor, Rachel, how would you bear
it if I would not let you help me?" And Rachel had wept slow, difficult
tears, and had given Hester the comfort of helping her. The greater
generosity was with Rachel, and Hester knew it.

And as Rachel's fortunes sank, Hester's rose. Lady Susan Gresley had one
talent, and she did not lay it up in a napkin. She had the art of
attracting people to her house, that house to which Mrs. West had never
forced an entrance. Hester was thrown from the first into a society
which her clergyman brother, who had never seen it, pronounced to be
frivolous, worldly, profane, but which no one has called dull. There
were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to
place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she