h
Lady Henry's arrogance, of her gifts with her circumstances; the
presence in this very world, where she had gained so marked a personal
success, of two clashing estimates of herself, both of which she
perfectly understood--the one exalting her, the other merely implying
the cool and secret judgment of persons who see the world as it
is--these things made a heat and poison in her blood.

She was not good enough, not desirable enough, to be the wife of the man
she loved. Here was the plain fact that stung and stung.

Jacob Delafield had thought her good enough! She still felt the pressure
of his warm, strong fingers, the touch of his kiss upon her hand. What a
paradox was she living in! The Duchess might well ask: why, indeed, had
she refused Jacob Delafield--that first time? As to the second refusal,
that needed no explanation, at least for herself. When, upon that winter
day, now some six weeks past, which had beheld Lady Henry more than
commonly tyrannical, and her companion more than commonly weary and
rebellious, Delafield's stammered words--as he and she were crossing
Grosvenor Square in the January dusk--had struck for the second time
upon her ear, she was already under Warkworth's charm. But before--the
first time? She had come to Lady Henry firmly determined to marry as
soon and as well as she could--to throw off the slur on her life--to
regularize her name and place in the world. And then the possible heir
of the Chudleighs proposes to her--and she rejects him!

It was sometimes difficult for her now to remember all the whys and
wherefores of this strange action of which she was secretly so proud.
But the explanation was in truth not far from that she had given to the
Duchess. The wild strength in her own nature had divined and shrunk from
a similar strength in Delafield's. Here, indeed, one came upon the fact
which forever differentiated her from the adventuress, had Sir Wilfrid
known. She wanted money and name; there were days when she hungered for
them. But she would not give too reckless a price for them. She was a
personality, a soul--not a vulgar woman--not merely callous or greedy.
She dreaded to be miserable; she had a thirst for happiness, and the
heart was, after all, stronger than the head.

Jacob Delafield? No! Her being contracted and shivered at the thought of
him. A will tardily developed, if all accounts of his school and college
days were true, but now, as she believed, invincible; a mystic