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.

The rest followed. Rachael liked Clarence, finding it agreeable
that he knew how to dress, how to order a dinner, tip servants,
and take care of a woman in a crowd. His family was one of the
oldest in America, and he was rich. She was sorry that Billy's
mother was living, but then one couldn't have everything, and,
after all, she was married again, which seemed to mitigate the
annoyance. Rachael said to herself that this was a wiser marriage
than the proposed one with poor Stephen: Stephen had been a wild,
romantic boy, full of fresh passion and dazed with exultant
dreams; Clarence was a man, longing less for moonshine and roses
and the presence of his beloved one than for a gracious,