“I just want to say this, Rachael,” Clarence said, with an icy dignity only slightly impaired by the lingering influences of drink.  “I’m Billy’s father, and I understand her, and she understands me.  That’s all that’s necessary; do you get me?” He put his cigarette holder back in his mouth, gripped it firmly between his teeth, and turned again to his paper.  “If some of you damned jealous women who are always running around trying to make trouble would let her alone” he went on sulkily, “I’d be obliged to you—­that’s all!”

Rachael settled her ruffles in a big wing-chair with the innocent expression of a casual caller.  She took a book from the reading table, and fluttered a few pages indifferently.

“Listen, Clancy,” said she placatingly.  “Florence was just here, and she says—­and I agree—­that there is no question that Joe Pickering is devoted to Bill.  Now, I don’t say that Billy is equally devoted—­”

“Ha!  Better not!” said Clarence at white heat, one eye watchful over the top of the paper.

“But I do say,” pursued Rachael steadily, “that she is with him a good deal more than she will admit.  Yesterday, for instance, when she was playing tennis with the Parmalees and the Pinckard boy, Kent came up to the house to get some ginger ale.  I happened to be dummy, and I went out on the terrace.  Joe’s horse was down near the courts, and Joe and Billy were sitting there on one of the benches—­where the others were I don’t know.  When Kent went down with the ginger ale, Joe got on his horse and went off.  Of course it was only for a few minutes, but Billy didn’t say anything about it—­”

Her voice, with a tentative question in it, rested in air.  Clarence turned a page with some rustling of paper.

“Then Florence says,” Rachael went on after a moment, “that when she and Gardner stopped here Wednesday night Joe was here, and Vivvie Sartoris wasn’t here.  Now, of course, I don’t know, for I didn’t ask Alfred—–­”

“There you go,” said the sick man witheringly.  “That’s right—­ask the maids, and get all the servants talking; all come down on the heels of a poor little girl like a pack of yapping wolves!  I suppose if she was plain and unattractive—­I should think you’d be ashamed,” he went on, changing his high and querulous key to one of almost priestly authority and reproof, “Upon my word, it’s beneath your dignity.  My little girl comes to me, and she explains the whole matter.  Pickering admires her—­she can’t help that—­and she has an influence over him.  She tells me he hasn’t touched a thing but beer for six weeks, just because she asked him to give up heavy drinking.  He told her the other day that if he had met her a few years ago, Lucy never would have left him.  She’s wakened the boy up, he’s a different fellow—­”

“All that may be true,” Rachael said quickly, the color that his preposterous rebuke had summoned to her cheeks still flushing them, “still, you don’t want Billy to marry Joe Pickering!  You know that sort of pity, and that business of reforming a man—­” She paused, but Clarence did not speak.  “Not that Billy herself realizes it, I daresay,” Rachael added presently, watching the reader’s absorbed face for an answering look.