"My dear, I don't eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!" Alice said cheerfully. "I mind that more than any other phase!"
"But I am such a broken reed!" Rachael smiled ruefully. "I have no energy!"
The older woman laughed.
"I know, my dear--haven't I been through it all? Just don't worry, and spare Greg what you can--"
Rachael could do neither. She wanted Warren every minute, and she wanted nobody else. Her favorite hours were when she lay on the couch, near the fire, playing with his free hand, while he read to her or talked to her. She wanted to hear, over and over again, that he loved no one else; and sometimes she declined invitations without even consulting him, "because we're happier by our own fire than anywhere else, aren't we, dearest?" "Don't tell me about your stupid operations!" she would smile at him, "talk about--US!"
She went over and over the details of her old life with a certain morbid satisfaction in his constant reassurance. Her marriage had not been the cause of Clarence's suicide, nor of Billy's elopement; she had done her share for them both, more than her share!
Summer came, and she and the baby were comfortably established at Home Dunes. Warren came when he could, perhaps twice a month, and usually without warning. If he promised her the week-ends, she felt aggrieved to have him miss one, so he wired her every day, and sent her books and fruit, letters and magazines every week, and came at irregular intervals. Alice and George Valentine and their children, her garden, her baby, and the ocean she loved so well must fill this summer for Rachael.
CHAPTER III
The beautiful Mrs. Gregory made her first appearance in society, after the birth of her second son, on the occasion of Miss Leila Buckney's marriage to Mr. Parker Hoyt. The continual postponement of this event had been a standing joke among their friends for two or three years; it took place in early December, at the most fashionable of all the churches, with a reception and supper to follow at the most fashionable of all the hotels. Leila naturally looked tired and excited; she had made a gallant fight for her lover, for long years, and she had won, but as yet the returning tide of comfort and satisfaction had not begun in her life. Parker had been a trying fiance; he was a cool-blooded, fishlike little man; there had been other complications: her father's heavy financial losses, her mother's discontent in the lingering engagement, her sister's persisting state of unmarriedness.