When Isabella was able to be about again , her pale face was harder than ever ; and , had there been about her any one discerning enough to notice it , there was a subtle change in her bearing and manner . A certain nervous expectancy , a fluttering restlessness was gone . Isabella had ceased to hope secretly that her husband would yet come back . She had in her secret soul thought he would ; and she had meant to forgive him when she had humbled him sufficiently , and when he had abased himself as she considered he should . But now she knew that he did not mean to sue for her forgiveness ; and the hate that sprang out of her old love was a rank and speedy and persistent growth . Rachel , from her earliest recollection , had been vaguely conscious of a difference between her own life and the lives of her playmates . For a long time it puzzled her childish brain . Finally , she reasoned it out that the difference consisted in the fact that they had fathers and she , Rachel Spencer , had none -- not even in the graveyard , as Carrie Bell and Lilian Boulter had . Why was this ? Rachel went straight to her mother , put one little dimpled hand on Isabella Spencer 's knee , looked up with great searching blue eyes , and said gravely , `` Mother , why have n't I got a father like the other little girls ? '' Isabella Spencer laid aside her work , took the seven year old child on her lap , and told her the whole story in a few direct and bitter words that imprinted themselves indelibly on Rachel 's remembrance . She understood clearly and hopelessly that she could never have a father -- that , in this respect , she must always be unlike other people . `` Your father cares nothing for you , '' said Isabella Spencer in conclusion . `` He never did care . You must never speak of him to anybody again . '' Rachel slipped silently from her mother 's knee and ran out to the Springtime garden with a full heart . There she cried passionately over her mother 's last words . It seemed to her a terrible thing that her father should not love her , and a cruel thing that she must never talk of him . Oddly enough , Rachel 's sympathies were all with her father , in as far as she could understand the old quarrel . She did not dream of disobeying her mother and she did not disobey her .
Never again did the child speak of her father ; but XXXXX had not forbidden her to think of him , and thenceforth Rachel thought of him constantly -- so constantly that , in some strange way , he seemed to become an unguessed-of part of her inner life -- the unseen , ever-present companion in all her experiences .
Bell Boulter Isabella Mother Rachel Spencer bearing love rank year