The house was of course a great care to her, the more so because Billy was in it so little, and was so frankly eager for the time when she should leave it and go to a house of her own, and because Clarence was absolutely indifferent to it in his better moods, and pleased with nothing when he was in the grip of his besetting sin.  The Breckenridges did little formal entertaining, but the man of the house liked to bring men down from town for week-end visits, and Billy brought her young friends in and out with youthful indifference to domestic regulations, so that on Rachael, as housekeeper, there fell no light burden.

She carried it gracefully, knitting her handsome brows as the seasons brought about their endless problems, discussing bulbs with old Rafael in the garden when the snow melted, discussing paper and paint in the first glory of May, superintending the making of iced drinks on the hot summer afternoons, and in October filling her woodroom duly with the great logs that would blaze neglected in the drawing-room fireplace all winter long.  The house was not large, as such houses go; too much room was wasted by a very modern architect in linen closets and coat closets, bathrooms and hall space, dressing-rooms, passages, and nooks and corners generally.  Yet Rachael’s guest-rooms were models in their way, and when she gave a luncheon the women who came were always ready to exclaim in despairing admiration over the beauty of the gardens, the flower-filled, airy rooms, the table appointments, and the hostess herself.

But when they said that she was “wonderful”—­and it was the inevitable word for Rachael Breckenridge-the general meaning went deeper than this.  She was wonderful in her pride, the dignity and the silence of her attitude toward her husband; she had been a wonderful mother to Clarence’s daughter; not a loving mother, perhaps—­she was not loving to anyone—­but a miracle of determination and clearness of vision.

Who else, her friends wondered, could have cleared the social horizon for Paula Breckenridge’s daughter so effectively?  With what brisk resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless European wanderings, cropped the child’s artificially curled hair, given away the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks and hats.  Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had entered Miss Proctor’s select school, entered Miss Roger’s select dancing class, entered Professor Darling’s expensive riding classes.  Billy, in dark-blue Peter Thompsons, in black stockings and laced boots, had been dropped in among other little girls in Peter Thompsons and laced boots, little girls with the approved names of Whittaker and Bowditch, Moran and Merridew and Parmalee.

Billy had never doubted her stepmother’s judgment; like all of the new Mrs. Breckenridge’s friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that lady’s amazing efficiency.  She had been a spoiled and discontented little rowdy.  She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman.  Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he could ever do himself.