That was seven years ago.  She knew exactly that for truth now.  Long ago she had learned that whatever impulse had moved Clarence Breckenridge to ask her to marry him was quickly displaced by his vision of Billy’s need as being greater than his own.

It had been an unpalatable revelation, for Rachael was a woman proud as well as beautiful.  But presently she had accepted the situation as it stood, somehow fighting her way, as the years went by, to fresh acceptances:  the acceptance of Billy’s ripening charms, the acceptance of Clarence’s more and more frequent times of inebriated irresponsibility.  Silently she made her mental adjustments, moving through her gay and empty life in an unsuspected bitterness of solitude, won to protest and rebellion only when the cold surface she presented to the world was threatened from within or without.

It was distinctly threatened now, she realized with a little sick twist of apprehension at heart, when her casual inquiry to a maid upon entering was answered by a discreet, “Yes, Mrs. Breckenridge, Mr. Breckenridge came home half an hour ago.  Alfred is with him.”

This was unexpected.  Rachael did not glance either at her guest or her stepdaughter, but she disposed of them both in a breath.

“Someone wants you on the telephone, Billy,” she repeated after the maid’s information.  “Take it in the library.  Run right up to my room, Elinor, and I’ll be there in two minutes.  I’ll send some one in with towels and brushes; you’ve time for a tub.  Take these things, Helda, and give them to Annie, and tell her to lookout for Miss Vanderwall.”

The square entrance hall was sweet with flowers in the early spring evening, Oriental rugs were spread on the dull mirror of the floor, opened doors gave glimpses of airy colonial interiors, English chintzes crowded with gay colored fruits and flowers, brick fireplaces framed in classic white and showing a brave gleam of brass firedogs in the soft lamplight.  Not a book on the long tables, not an etching on the dull rich paper of the walls, struck a false note.  It was all exquisitely in tone.

But Rachael Breckenridge, at best, saw less its positive perfections than the tiniest opening through which an imperfection might push its way, and in such an hour as this she saw it not at all.  Her mouth a trifle firm in its outline, her face a little pale, she went quickly up the wide white stairway and along the open balcony above.  There were several doors on this balcony, which was indeed the upper hall.  Mrs. Breckenridge opened one of them without knocking, and closed it noiselessly behind her.