labors and sacrifices incredible, she got herself a thorough
education. Her next ambition was to be rich; without the beauty
that appeals to the senses, she married herself to a rich New
Englander, Henry Bowker. Her final and fiercest ambition was
social power. She married her daughter to the only son and
namesake of Lucius Quintus Severence. The pretensions of
aristocracy would soon collapse under the feeble hands of born
aristocrats were it not for two things--the passion of the masses
of mankind for looking up, and the frequent infusions into
aristocratic veins of vigorous common blood. Cornelia Bowker, born
Lard, adored "birth." In fulfilling her third ambition she had
herself born again. From the moment of the announcement of her
daughter's engagement to Lucius Severence, she ceased to be Lard
or Bowker and became Severence, more of a Severence than any of
the veritable Severences. Soon after her son-in-law and his father
died, she became so much THE Severence that fashionable people
forgot her origin, regarded her as the true embodiment of the
pride and rank of Severence--and Severence became, thanks wholly
to her, a synonym for pride and rank, though really the Severences
were not especially blue-blooded.

She did not live with her widowed daughter, as two establishments
were more impressive; also, she knew that she was not a livable
person--and thought none the worse of herself for that
characteristic of strong personalities. In the Severence family,
at the homestead, there were, besides five servants, but three
persons--the widowed Roxana and her two daughters, Margaret and
Lucia--Lucia so named by Madam Bowker because with her birth ended
the Severence hopes of a son to perpetuate in the direct line the
family Christian name for its chief heir. From the side entrance