“Oh, yes,” said Rachael.  “I want that as much as ever; but I want to love the man.  I want to be happy.”

“Well, do love him,” exclaimed her mother with energy.  “Your father was twenty years older than myself, and a Frenchman, but I made up my mind to love him, and I did—­for a good many years.”

“You had to leave him in the end.  Do you wish me to do the same?”

“You will do nothing of the kind.  There never was but one John Fawcett.”

“I don’t love this Levine, and I never shall love him.  I don’t believe at all that that kind of feeling can be created by the brain, that it responds to nothing but the will.  I shall not love that way.  I may be ignorant, but I know that.”

“You have read too much Shakespeare!  Doubtless you imagine yourself one of his heroines—­Juliet?  Rosalind?”

“I have never imagined myself anybody but Rachael Fawcett.  I cannot imagine myself Rachael Levine.  But I know something of myself—­I have read and thought enough for that.  I could love someone—­but not this bleached repulsive Dane.  Why will you not let me wait?  It is my right.  No, you need not curl your lip—­I am not a little girl.  I may be sixteen.  I may be without experience in the world, but you have been almost my only companion, and until just now I have talked with middle-aged men only, and much with them.  I had no real childhood.  You have educated my brain far beyond my years.  To-day I feel twenty, and it seems to me that I see far down into myself—­much deeper than you do.  I tell you that if I marry this man, I shall be the most hopeless wretch on earth.”

Mary Fawcett was puzzled and distressed, but she did not waver for a moment.  The cleverest of girls could not know what was best for herself, and the mother who permitted her daughter to take her life into her own hands was a poor creature indeed.

“Listen, my dear child,” she said tenderly, “you have always trusted in me, believed me.  I know that this is a wise and promising marriage for you.  And—­” she hesitated, but it was time to play her trump.  “You know that my health is not good, but you do not know how bad it is.  Dr. Hamilton says that the rheumatism may fly to my heart at any moment, and I must see you married—­”

She had ejaculated the last words; Rachael had shrieked, and flung herself upon her, her excitement at this sudden and cruel revelation bursting out in screams and sobs and a torrent of tears.  Her mother had seen her excited and in brief ungovernable tempers, but she never had suspected that she was capable of such passion as this; and, much disturbed, she led her off to bed, and sent for her advisers, Archibald Hamn and Dr. Hamilton.

IV