Once she had been a bright and energetic person with plenty of resources
within herself; now she had singularly few. She was distraught and
uneasy in her mind, could settle less and less to her singing or a book,
and was the victim of an increasing restlessness of mind and limb.
Others did not see it; she had self-control; but repression was no cure.
And for all this there were reasons enough; but the fear of
identification by the neighbors as the notorious Mrs. Minchin was no
longer one of them.
No; it was her own life, root and branch, that had grown into the
upas-tree which was poisoning existence for Rachel Steel. She was being
punished for her second marriage as she had been punished for her first,
only more deservedly, and with more subtle stripes. Each day brought a
dozen tokens of the anomalous position which she had accepted in the
madness of an hour of utter recklessness and desperation. Rachel was not
mistress in her own house, nor did she feel for a moment that it was her
own house at all. Everything was done for her; a skilled housekeeper
settled the smallest details; and that these were perfect alike in
arrangement and execution, that the said housekeeper was a woman of
irreproachable tact and capability, and that she herself had never an
excuse for concrete complaint, formed a growing though intangible
grievance in Rachel's mind.
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