Would Rhett insist on keeping her in Atlanta as people said he kept the Watling woman?
If he made her stay in Atlanta, he'd have to pay well--pay enough to balance what her absence from Tara would be worth.
Scarlett was very ignorant of the hidden side of men's lives and had no way of knowing just what the arrangement might involve.
And she wondered if she would have a baby.
That would be distinctly terrible.
"I won't think of that now.
I'll think of it later," and she pushed the unwelcome idea into the back of her mind lest it shake her resolution.
She'd tell the family tonight she was going to Atlanta to borrow money, to try to mortgage the farm if necessary.
That would be all they needed to know until such an evil day when they might find out differently.
With the thought of action, her head went up and her shoulders went back.
This affair was not going to be easy, she knew.
Formerly, it had been Rhett who asked for her favors and she who held the power.
Now she was the beggar and a beggar in no position to dictate terms.
"But I won't go to him like a beggar.
I'll go like a queen granting favors.
He'll never know."
She walked to the long pier glass and looked at herself, her head held high.
And she saw framed in the cracking gilt molding a stranger.
It was as if she were really seeing herself for the first time in a year.
She had glanced in the mirror every morning to see that her face was clean and her hair tidy but she had always been too pressed by other things to really see herself.
But this stranger!
Surely this thin hollow-cheeked woman couldn't be Scarlett O'Hara!
Scarlett O'Hara had a pretty, coquettish, high- spirited face.
This face at which she stared was not pretty at all and had none of the charm she remembered so well.
It was white and strained and the black brows above slanting green eyes swooped up startlingly against the white skin like frightened bird's wings.
There was a hard and hunted look about this face.
"I'm not pretty enough to get him!" she thought and desperation came back to her.
"I'm thin--oh, I'm terribly thin!"
She patted her cheeks, felt frantically at her collar bones, feeling them stand out through her basque.
And her breasts were so small, almost as small as Melanie's.
She'd have to put ruffles in her bosom to make them look larger and she had always had contempt for girls who resorted to such subterfuges.
Ruffles!
That brought up another thought.
Her clothes.
She looked down at her dress, spreading its mended folds wide between her hands.
Rhett liked women who were well dressed, fashionably dressed.
She remembered with longing the flounced green dress she had worn when she first came out of mourning, the dress she wore with the green plumed bonnet he had brought her and she recalled the approving compliments he had paid her.
She remembered, too, with hate sharpened by envy the red plaid dress, the red-topped boots with tassels and the pancake hat of Emmie Slattery.
They were gaudy but they were new and fashionable and certainly they caught the eye.
And, oh, how she wanted to catch the eye!
Especially the eye of Rhett Butler!
If he should see her in her old clothes, he'd know everything was wrong at Tara.
And he must not know.
What a fool she had been to think she could go to Atlanta and have him for the asking, she with her scrawny neck and hungry cat eyes and raggedy dress!
If she hadn't been able to pry a proposal from him at the height of her beauty, when she had her prettiest clothes, how could she expect to get one now when she was ugly and dressed tackily?
If Miss Pitty's story was true, he must have more money than anyone in Atlanta and probably had his pick of all the pretty ladies, good and bad.
Well, she thought grimly, I've got something that most pretty ladies haven't got--and that's a mind that's made up.
And if I had just one nice dress--
There wasn't a nice dress in Tara or a dress which hadn't been turned twice and mended.
"That's that," she thought, disconsolately looking down at the floor.