In Mildred Gower's
brain they were the natural, the inevitable, thoughts.
They indicated everything as to her training, nothing
as to her character. So, when she, thinking only of a
rich marriage with no matter whom, and contrasting
herself with the fine women portrayed in the novels and
plays, condemned herself as shameless and degraded,
she did herself grave injustice.
But no rich man, whether attractive or repulsive,
offered. Indeed, no man of any kind offered. Instead,
it was her mother who married.
A widower named James Presbury, elderly, with an
income of five to six thousand a year from inherited
wealth, stumbled into Hanging Rock to live, was
impressed by the style the widow Gower maintained,
believed the rumor that her husband had left her better
off than was generally thought, proposed, and was
accepted. And two years and a month after Henry
Gower's death his widow became Mrs. James Presbury
--and ceased to veil from her new husband the truth
as to her affairs.
Mildred had thought that, than the family quarrels
incident to settling her father's estate, human nature
could no lower descend.
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