her an important role in the drama of a life as yet unborn.



CHAPTER VI



Whatever hope of escape from his self-imposed bondage Preston Cheney
had entertained when he began the note to his fiancee which the
Baroness had read, completely vanished during the weeks which
followed the death of Mrs Lawrence.

Mabel's nervous condition was alarming, and her father seemed to rely
wholly upon his future son-in-law for courage and moral support
during the trying ordeal. Like most large men of strong physique,
Judge Lawrence was as helpless as an infant in the presence of an
ailing woman; and his experience as the husband of a wife whose
nerves were the only notable thing about her, had given him an
absolute terror of feminine invalids.

Mabel had never been very fond of her mother; she had not been a
loving or a dutiful daughter. A petulant child and an irritable,
fault-finding young woman, who had often been devoid of sympathy for
her parents, she now exhibited such an excess of grief over the death
of her mother that her reason seemed to be threatened.

It was, in fact, quite as much anger as grief which caused her
nervous paroxysms. Mabel Lawrence had never since her infancy known
what it was to be thwarted in a wish. Both parents had been slaves