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, distinguished woman who would take her place before the world as mistress of his home and guardian of his child.

She had sometimes doubted her power to make Stephen happy—­ Stephen, who talked with all a boy’s heavenly shyness of long days tramping the woods and long nights over the fire, of little sons and daughters romping in the Trecastle gardens; but she entered into her marriage with Clarence Breckenridge with entire self-confidence.  She had been struggling more or less definitely all her life toward just such a position as this; it was a comparatively easy matter to fill it, now that she had got it.

Carol she considered a decided asset.  The child adored her, and her services to Carol were so much good added to the beauty, charm, and wisdom that she brought into the bargain.  That Clarence could ask more in the way of beauty, wisdom, and charm was not conceivable; Rachael knew her own value too well to have any doubts on that score.

And had her husband been a strong man, her dignified and ripened loveliness must inevitably have won him.  She stood ready to be won.  She held to her bond in all generosity.  What heart and soul and body could do for him was his to claim.  She did not love him, but she did not need love’s glamour to show her what her exact value to him might be; what was her natural return for all her marriage gave her.