Gradually John Rawn had been losing the rusticity which had accompanied him well up to middle age. The city now began to leave its imprint. The waistcoat of Mr. Rawn gradually attained a curve unknown to it in earlier years, so that his watch fob now hung in free air when he stood erect. His face was perhaps more florid, his hair certainly more gray. His skin remained fresh and clean, and always he was well-groomed, having the able assistance of his wife now in the selection of his tailoring, as well as her coaching in social usage. They always looked their part. At morning, at noon, or at dewy eve, in any assemblage or any chance situation, they both played in the rôle assigned to them in their own ambitions. Born of environment wholly unconventional, they now took on that of conventionality as though born to that instead. You could not have found a more perfect type of respectability than John Rawn, a more absolutely valid exemplar of good social form than his wife, Virginia. All things prospered under their magic touch, the genii of the lamp seemed theirs. No problems remained for them to solve. They had in their own belief attained what may be attained in American life, and they were happy. Or, that is to say, they should at least have been happy, if their theory of life and success, and of those like to theirs, be correct. At least they were what they were--products of a wonderful country which makes millionaires overnight and produces out of bakeries women of one generation fit to be the wives of princes born of forty kings.
We are, some of us at least, accustomed to worship such as these as they ride by upon the high car of success, accustomed to envy and to emulate them. If that vehicle be the car of Juggernaut, crushing under its wheels multitudes of those who worship, it is no concern of those who sit aloft. For a long time Mr. Rawn and his wife remained ignorant of the fact that one victim under the wheels of their success was none other than Mr. Rawn's daughter, Grace.
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.
