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Rh with a bitter sneer. “He has never remembered that he is your father. He cares nothing about you — never did care.”

Rachel took no notice of this taunt. It had no power to hurt her, its venom being neutralized by a secret knowledge of her own in which her mother had no share.

“Either I shall invite my father to my wedding, or I shall not have a wedding,” she repeated steadily, adopting her mother’s own effective tactics of repetition undistracted by argument.

“Invite him then,” snapped Mrs. Spencer, with the ungraceful anger of a woman, long accustomed to having her own way, compelled for once to yield. “It’ll be like chips in porridge anyhow — neither good nor harm. He won't come.”

Rachel made no response. Now that the battle was over, and the victory won, she found herself tremulously on the verge of tears. She rose quickly and went upstairs to her own room, a dim little place shadowed by the white birches growing thickly outside — a virginal room, where everything bespoke the maiden. She lay down on the blue and white patchwork quilt on her little bed, and cried softly and bitterly.

Her heart, at this crisis in her life, yearned for her father, who was almost a stranger to her. She knew that her mother had probably spoken the truth