“So glad to see you alone a moment, Rachael—­one never does,” said Florence.  “Tell me, do you go to the Villalongas’?”

“Clarence and Billy will, I suppose,” the other woman said with an enigmatic smile.

“But not you?”

“Perhaps; I don’t know, Florence.”  Rachael’s serene eyes roved the summer landscape contentedly.  Mrs. Haviland looked a little puzzled.

“Things are better, aren’t they, dear?” she asked delicately.

“Things?”

“Between you and Clarence, I mean.”

“Oh!  Yes, perhaps they are.  Changed, perhaps.”

“How do you mean changed?” Florence was instantly in arms.

“Well, it couldn’t go on that way forever, Florence,” Rachael said pleasantly.

Rendered profoundly uneasy by her tone, the other woman was silent for a moment.

“Perhaps it is just as well to make different plans for the summer,” she said presently.  “We all get on each other’s nerves sometimes, and change or separation does us a world of good.”

“Doctor Gregory!  Doctor Gregory!  At the telephone!” chanted a club attendant, passing through the tea-room.

“On the tennis courts,” Mrs. Breckenridge said, without turning her head.  “You had better make it a message:  explain that he’s playing!”

“I didn’t see him go down,” remarked Florence, diverted.

“His car came in about half an hour ago; he and Joe Butler went down to the courts without coming into the club at all,” Rachael said.

“I wonder what he’s doing this summer?” mused the older lady.

“I believe he’s going to take his mother abroad with him,” said the well-informed Rachael.  “She’ll visit some friends in England and Ireland, and then join him.  He’s to do the Alps with someone, and meet her in Rome.”

“She tell you?” asked Mrs. Haviland, interested.

“He did,” the other said briefly.

“I didn’t know she had any friends,” was Florence’s next comment.  “I don’t see her visiting, somehow!”

“Oh, my dear.  Old Catholic families with chapels in their houses, and nuns, and Mother Superiors!” Rachael’s tone was light, but as she spoke a cold premonition seized her heart.  She fell silent.

A moment later Charlotte, who had been hovering uncertainly in the doorway of the room, came out to join her mother with a brightly spontaneous air.

“Oh, here you are, M’ma!” said Charlotte.  “Are you ready to go?”

“Been having a nice time, dear?” her mother asked fondly.

“Very,” Charlotte said.  “I’ve been looking over old magazines in the library—­so interesting!”

This literary enthusiasm struck no answering spark from the matron.

“In the library!” said Florence quickly.  “Why, I thought you were with Charley!”

“Oh, no, M’ma,” answered Charlotte, with her little air that was not quite prim and not quite mincing, and that yet suggested both.  “Charley left me just after you did; he had an engagement with Straker.”  She reached for a macaroon, and ate it with a brightly disengaged air, her eyes, behind their not unbecoming glasses, studying the golf links with absorbed interest.