“I promise,” Rachael said huskily, her heart beating quick with vague fright.  Mrs. Gregory was in her deep armchair, she looked old and broken to-night, far older than she would look a few days later when she lay in her coffin.  Rachael had brought her a cup of hot bouillon, and had knelt, daughter fashion, to see that she drank it, and now the thin old hand clutched her shoulder, and the eager old eyes were close to her face.

“I have made mistakes, I have had every sorrow a woman can know,” said old Mrs. Gregory, “but prayer has never failed me, and when I go, I believe I will not be afraid!” “I have made mistakes, too,” Rachael said, strangely stirred, “and for the boys’ sake, for Warren’s sake, I want to be—­wise!”

The thin old hand patted hers.  Old Mrs. Gregory lay with closed eyes, no flicker of life in her parchment-colored face.  “Pray about it!” she said in a whisper.  She patted Rachael’s hands for another moment, but she did not speak again.

At the funeral, kneeling by Warren’s side in the great cathedral, her pale face more lovely than ever in a setting of fresh black, Rachael tried for the first time in her life to pray.

They were rich beyond any dream or need now.  Rachael could hardly have believed that so great a change in her fortune could make so little change in her feeling.  A sudden wave of untimely heat smote the city, and it was hastily decided that the boys and their mother must get to the shore, leaving all the details of settling his mother’s estate to Warren.  In the autumn Rachael would make those changes in the old house of which she had dreamed so many years ago.  Warren was not to work too hard, and was to come to them for every week-end.

He took them down himself in the car, Rachael beside him on the front seat, her baby in her arms, Martin and Mary, with Jim, in the tonneau.  Home Dunes had been opened and aired; luncheon was waiting when they got there.  Rachael felt triumphant, powerful.  Between their mourning and Warren’s unexpected business responsibilities she would have a summer to her liking.

He went away the next day, and Rachael began a series of cheerful letters.  She tried not to reproach him when a Saturday night came without bringing him, she schooled herself to read, to take walks, to fight depression and loneliness.  She and Alice practised piano duets, studied Italian, made sick calls in the village, and sewed for the babies of dark’s Hills and Quaker Bridge.  About twice a month, usually together, the two went up to the city for a day’s shopping.  Then George and Warren met them, and they dined and perhaps went to the theatre together.  It was on one of these occasions that Rachael learned that Magsie Clay was in town.

“Working hard—­too hard,” said Warren in response to her questions.  “She’s rehearsing already for October.”

“Warren!  In all this heat?”

“Yes, and she looks pulled down, poor kid!”