Alas! for that young lady. She unfortunately had been now for almost a year an aspirant in her own right to a seat upon the car of ease and luxury; yet here she saw herself swiftly supplanted, and worse than that, swiftly forgotten! Her year of quasi-place and power had left her unwilling to return to her own humble home. She remained on at Graystone Hall, now rarely visited by her husband. She found herself calmly accepted, yet calmly neglected as well. Very naturally she hated the new Mrs. Rawn with all her soul; a hatred which that lady repaid with nothing better than a straight look into Grace's dark eyes, a look innocent, calm, and wholly fearless. Grace must now see the very jewels her own mother should have worn, blazing at the neck and hands of her stepmother; must see that lady taking assuredly and as of right, what Grace could now never ask or expect for herself. With an unapproachable and wholly hateful air of distinction and good breeding which rankled most of all in crude Mrs. Halsey's heart, Virginia Rawn sat high on the car of Juggernaut; and the car of Juggernaut passed on. In pride and delight over his young wife, John Rawn really forgot his daughter. The young new wife did the same, or appeared to do so. IV John Rawn had told the truth to his wife when first he had declared his sentiments toward her--he never before that time really had known love, or at least had not known infatuated love such as that he felt for her. He exulted in the vistas of delight which he saw before them, fancying them endless. The very sight of his wife, cool, faultless, self-possessed, haughty, filled him with a sense of his own importance, making him feel that he was one of God's chosen. She was his, he had found her, discovered her, collected her. She was his to put upon a pedestal, to admire, to display, to worship, to load down with jewels. He had something now which other men coveted and envied. He flaunted his ownership of such a woman in their faces. What more can a rich man do than that same? Is that not the dream and test of power--to secure what others may not have, to secure special privileges in this life? And is not the quest of beauty the first business of him who has attained power? Of all these special privileges which had come to John Rawn so swiftly in these late rapid years, none so delicately and warmly filled his heart as that of being able to call Virginia Rawn his own. Why blame him? The sultans of thirty or forty generations have devised nothing better than this test of power.