Mabel's faith in the sincerity of her sister-in-law's agreeable sayings and ways was not invariable nor absolute. She liked her after a certain fashion; got along swimmingly with her, the amazed public decided “SO much better than could have been expected, and than was customary with relations by marriage, and not by descent;” yet her more upright nature and different training helped her to detect the petty artifices with which Clara cajoled the unwary, moulded the plastic at her will. But she had never questioned the reality of her love for Winston. As a wife, her deportment was exemplary, her devotion too freely and consistently rendered to have its spring in policy or affectation. She gloried in her handsome, courtly lord, and in his attachment for herself. Whether she would have espied the same causes for loving exultation in him, had he been a poor clergyman or merchant's clerk, was an irrelevant consideration. The master of Ridgeley was not to be contemplated apart from the possessions and dignities that were his inalienable pedestal. Clara Dorrance was a clever woman, and she had given these due weight in accepting his hand; and they may have had their influence in moving her to unceasing, yet unobtrusive endeavor to make herself still more necessary to his happiness, to strengthen her hold upon him by every means an affectionate and beloved wife has at her command. She had done well for herself--she was thinking while he concluded as silently within himself that the slight pensiveness tempering the expressive face was its loveliest dress. She--beautiful and penniless, ambitious, and a devotee of pleasure--yet dependent for food and clothing upon her mother's life-interest in an estate, not one penny of which would revert to her children at her decease; without kindred and without society in the elegant suburb they had inhabited for four or five years, might have been elated at a less brilliant match than that she had made. The “best people” of the aforesaid suburb were exclusive; slow to form intimacies with their unaccredited neighbors, and very hasty in breaking them at the faintest whiff of a doubtful or tainted reputation. And of the second best the Dorrances had kept themselves clear. Having met and captivated her wealthy lover on a rarely fortunate summer jaunt, made in company with her eldest brother, his wife, and two relatives of the last-named, Clara did not repel him or disgust the best people of Roxbury by indiscreet raptures over, or exhibition of, her prize.