“I don’t even know that Charlotte is going,” Mrs. Haviland said, with an auntly smile of baffling sweetness that yet contained a subtle reproof.  “Uncle Gardner and I haven’t made up our minds.  Isabelle in any case would only go to look on, so she is not so much interested, but poor Charlotte is simply on tenterhooks to know whether it’s to be yes or no.  Girls’ first parties”—­her indulgent smile included Rachael—­“dear me, how important they seem!”

“I should think you’d have to answer Mrs. Bowditch,” said Carol in plain disgust at this maternal vacillation.

“Mrs. Bowditch is fortunately an old enough friend, dear, to waive the usual formalities,” her aunt answered sweetly.

“But, my gracious—­Charlotte’s two months older than I am, and she won’t know any of the men!” Carol protested.

“Don’t speak in that precocious way, Bill,” Rachael said sharply.  “You went to your first dances last winter!”

Carol gave her stepmother a look conspicuously devoid of affection, and turned to adjust her smart little hat with the aid of a narrow mirror hanging between the glass dining-room doors.

“You couldn’t drop me at the club, on your way to church, Tante?” she presently inquired.  And to Rachael she added, with youthful impatience, “I told Dad where I was going!”

Mrs. Haviland rose somewhat heavily.

“Glad to.  Any chance of you coming to lunch, Rachael?  What are your plans?”

“Thank you, no, woman dear!  I may go over to Gertrude’s for tea.”

The little group broke up.  Mrs. Haviland and her niece went out to the waiting motor car purring on the pebbled drive.  Rachael idly watched them out of sight, sighed at the thought of wasting so beautiful a day indoors, and went slowly upstairs.  Her husband, comfortably propped in pillows, looked better.

“Clarence,” said she, depositing several pounds of morning papers upon the foot of his bed, “who’s Billy lunching with at the club?”

Clarence picked up the uppermost paper, fixed his eyes attentively upon it, and puffed upon his cigarette for reply.

“Do you know?” Rachael asked vigorously.

No answer.  Mr. Breckenridge, his eyes still intent upon what he was reading, held his cigarette at arm’s length over the brass bowl on the table beside the bed, and dislodged a quarter-inch of ash with his little finger.

Rachael, briskly setting his cluttered table to rights, gave him an angry glance that, so far as any effect upon him was concerned, was thrown away.

“Don’t be so rude, Clarence,” she said, in annoyance.  “Billy said you agreed to her going to the club for golf.  Who’s she with?”

At last Mr. Breckenridge raised sodden and redshot eyes to his wife’s face, moistening his dark and swollen lips carefully with his tongue before he spoke.  He was a fat-faced man, who, despite evidences of dissipation, did not look his more than forty years.  There was no gray in his thin, silky hair, and there still lingered an air of youth and innocence in his round face.  This morning he was in a bad temper because his whole body was still upset from the Friday night dinner and drinking party, and in his soul he knew that he had cut rather a poor figure before Billy, and that the little minx had taken instant advantage of the situation.