victory won, she found herself tremulously on the verge of tears.
She rose quickly and went upstairs to her own room, a dim little
place shadowed by the white birches growing thickly outside--a
virginal room, where everything bespoke the maiden. She lay down
on the blue and white patchwork quilt on her bed, and cried
softly and bitterly.

Her heart, at this crisis in her life, yearned for her father,
who was almost a stranger to her. She knew that her mother had
probably spoken the truth when she said that he would not come.
Rachel felt that her marriage vows would be lacking in some
indefinable sacredness if her father were not by to hear them
spoken.

Twenty-five years before this, David Spencer and Isabella
Chiswick had been married. Spiteful people said there could be
no doubt that Isabella had married David for love, since he had
neither lands nor money to tempt her into a match of bargain and
sale. David was a handsome fellow, with the blood of a seafaring
race in his veins.

He had been a sailor, like his father and grandfather before him;
but, when he married Isabella, she induced him to give up the sea
and settle down with her on a snug farm her father had left her.
Isabella liked farming, and loved her fertile acres and opulent
orchards. She abhorred the sea and all that pertained to it,
less from any dread of its dangers than from an inbred conviction
that sailors were "low" in the social scale--a species of
necessary vagabonds. In her eyes there was a taint of disgrace
in such a calling. David must be transformed into a respectable,