When all was said and done, it was she and not
Gwenda who was Rowcliffe's wife. And she had other grounds for
complacency. Her sister, a solitary Miss Cartaret, stowed away in
Garth Vicarage, was of no account. She didn't matter. And as Mary
Cartaret Mary would have mattered even less. But Steven Rowcliffe's
professional reputation served him well. He counted. People who had
begun by trusting him had ended by liking him, and in two years' time
his social value had become apparent. And as Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe
Mary had a social value too.
But while Steven, who had always had it, took it for granted and never
thought about it, Mary could think of nothing else. Her social value,
obscured by the terrible two years in Garthdale, had come to her as a
discovery and an acquisition. For all her complacency, she could not
regard it as a secure thing. She was sensitive to every breath that
threatened it; she was unable to forget that, if she was Steven
Rowcliffe's wife, she was Alice Greatorex's sister.
Even as Mary Cartaret she had been sensitive to Alice. But in those
days of obscurity and isolation it was not in her to cast Alice off.
She had felt bound to Alice, not as Gwenda was bound, but pitiably,
irrevocably, for better, for worse. The solidarity of the family had
held.
She had not had anything to lose by sticking to her sister. Now it
seemed to her that she had everything to lose. The thought of Alice
was a perpetual annoyance to her.
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