Charlie St Clair was flagrantly unfaithful to the girl he had pursued
three years with his ardent wooings before she yielded to his suit.
Certainly none of these love marriages were examples for him to
follow. And in the midst of these reveries and reflections, Preston
Cheney came to Beryngford, and met Sylvester Lawrence and his
daughter Mabel. He met also Berene Dumont. Had he not met the
latter woman he would not have succumbed--so soon at least--to the
temptation held out by the former to advance his ambitious aims.

He would have hesitated, considered, and reconsidered, and without
doubt his better nature and his good taste would have prevailed. But
when fate threw Berene Dumont in his way, and circumstances brought
about his close associations with her for many months, there seemed
but one way of escape from the Scylla of his desires, and that was to
the Charybdis of a marriage with Miss Lawrence.

Miss Lawrence was not aware of the part Berene Dumont had played in
her engagement, but she knew perfectly the part her father's
influence and wealth had played; but she was quite content with
affairs as they were, and it mattered little to her what had brought
them about. To be married, rather than to be loved, had been her
ambition since she left school; being incapable of loving, she was
incapable of appreciating the passion in any of its phases. It had
always seemed to her that a great deal of nonsense was written and
talked about love. She thought demonstrative people very vulgar, and
believed kissing a means of conveying germs of disease.

But to be a married woman, with an establishment of her own, and a
husband to exhibit to her friends, was necessary to the maintenance
of her pride.