Even worse, however, did this marriage appear when looked at from the point of view of her father's future.

The widow might fascinate him by her knowledge of the world, her dash, her strength, her unconventionality--all these qualities Clara was willing to allow her--but she was convinced that she would be unendurable as a life companion.

She had come to an age when habits are not lightly to be changed, nor was she a woman who was at all likely to attempt to change them.

How would a sensitive man like her father stand the constant strain of such a wife, a woman who was all decision, with no softness, and nothing soothing in her nature?
It passed as a mere eccentricity when they heard of her stout drinking, her cigarette smoking, her occasional whiffs at a long clay pipe, her horsewhipping of a drunken servant, and her companionship with the snake Eliza, whom she was in the habit of bearing about in her pocket.

All this would become unendurable to her father when his first infatuation was past.