Vanderwalls and the Torrences, and the Chases. She met Clarence
Breckenridge and his wife, and the exquisitely dressed little girl
who was Billy to-day.

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