It so keenly wounded Rangely's self-love to be thought ill of
by a woman, that he was often forced to play at devotion which he not
only did not feel but of which the simulation was almost wearisome to
him. Nevertheless he was not, in this instance, without a shrewd
appreciation of all the possibilities of the situation. He said to
himself philosophically, that if worst came to worst and the fates had
really decided to marry him to Miss Merrivale, she had money, good
looks, and a fair position, and might on the whole prove more
manageable as a wife than one so clever and so high spirited as Ethel.
Miss Merrivale, on her part, was foolishly and fondly in love with the
broad-shouldered egotist. She had made up her mind from a variety of
causes that she should, on the whole, prefer to marry in Boston,
although in reality this meant simply that she wanted to marry Fred
Rangely. She pored over his books in secret, talked to him of them with
a want of comprehension only made tolerable by the fervor of her
admiration, and took pains to show him that she regarded him as the
literary hope of his generation of novelists. In vulgar parlance, she
flung herself at his head; and in such a case a girl's success may be
said to depend almost wholly on opportunity and the extent of her
lover's vanity.
Rangely had vanity enough and Mrs. Staggchase supplied the opportunity.
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