Why not further his life purpose by an
ambitious marriage? The first time the thought entered his mind he
had cast it out as something unclean and unworthy of his manhood.
Marriage was a holy estate, he said to himself, a sacrament to be
entered into with reverence, and sanctified by love. He must love
the woman who was to be the companion of his life, the mother of his
children.
Then he looked about among his early friends who had married, as
nearly all the young men of the middle classes in America do marry,
for love, or what they believed to be love. There was Tom Somers--a
splendid lad, full of life, hope and ambition when he married Carrie
Towne, the prettiest girl in Vandalia. Well, what was he now, after
seven years? A broken-spirited man, with a sickly, complaining wife
and a brood of ill-clad children. Harry Walters, the most infatuated
lover he had ever seen, was divorced after five years of discordant
marriage.
Charlie St Clair was flagrantly unfaithful to the girl he had pursued
three years with his ardent wooings before she yielded to his suit.
Certainly none of these love marriages were examples for him to
follow. And in the midst of these reveries and reflections, Preston
Cheney came to Beryngford, and met Sylvester Lawrence and his
daughter Mabel.
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