Her stepmother was silent.  She put on a ring, regarded it thoughtfully on her spread fingers, and took it off again.

“In the first place,” Billy said sullenly, “you’ll tell him a lot of things that aren’t so!”

Silence.  Outside the motor horn sounded impatiently.  Billy suddenly came close to her stepmother, her dark, mobile little face quite transformed by anger.

“You can tell him what you please,” she said in a cold fury, “but I’ll know why you did it—­it’s because you’re jealous, and you want everyone in the world to be in love with you!  You hate me because my father loves me, and you would do anything in the world to make trouble between us!  I’ve known it ever since I was a little girl, even if I never have said it before!  I—­” She choked, and tears of youthful rage came into her eyes.

“Don’t be preposterous, Bill.  You’ve said it before, every time you’ve been angry, in the last five years,” the older woman said coolly.  “This only means that you will feel that you have to wake me up, when you come in to-night, to say that you are sorry.”

“I will not!” said the girl at white heat.

“Well, I hope you won’t,” Rachael Breckenridge said amiably, “for if there is one thing I loathe more than another, it is being waked up for theatricals in the middle of the night.  Good-bye.  Be sure to thank Mrs. Bowditch for chaperoning you.”

“Are you going to speak to Clancy?” the girl demanded imperiously.

“Run along, Billy,” Rachael said, with a faint show of impatience.  “Nobody could speak to your father about anything to-night, as you ought to know.”

For a moment Billy stood still, breathing hard and with tightly closed lips, her angry eyes on her step-mother.  Then her breast rose on a childish, dry sob, she dropped her eyes, and moved a shining slipper-toe upon the rug with the immortal motion of embarrassed youth.

“You—­you used to like Joe, Rachael,” she said, after a moment, in a low tone.

“I don’t dislike him now,” Rachael said composedly.

“He’s awfully kind—­and—­and good, and Lucy never understood him, or tried to understand him!” said Billy in a burst.  The other woman smiled.

“If Joe Pickering told you any sentimental nonsense like that, kindly don’t retail it to me,” she said amusedly.

In a second Billy was roused to utter fury.  Her cheeks blazed, her breath came short and deep.  “I hate you!” she said passionately, and ran from the room.

Mrs. Breckenridge sat still for a few moments, but there was no emotion but utter weariness visible in her face.  After a while she said, “Oh, Lord!” in a tone compounded of amusement and disgust, and rising, she took a new book from the table, and went slowly downstairs.

In the lower hall Alfred met her, his fat young face duly mysterious and important in expression.

“Mr. Breckenridge got a telephone message from Doctor Jordan, Mrs. Breckenridge; the doctor’s been called into town to a patient, so he can’t see Mr. Breckenridge to-night.”