“Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the season the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at Belvedere Bay,” stated the social columns authoritatively.  “Mr. Breckenridge and Miss Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for the summer camp of Mrs. Booth Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs. Breckenridge will join them after spending a few weeks with friends.”

Rachael saw the notice on the morning of the last day that she and Clarence were together.  In the afternoon Billy and Clarence were to leave for the north, and Rachael was to go to Florence for a day or two.  She had been unusually indefinite about her plans for the summer, but in the general confusion of all plans this had not been noticed.  She had superintended the packing and assorting and storing of silver and linen, as a matter of course, and it was easy to see that certain things indisputably her own went into certain crates.  Nobody questioned her authority, and Clarence and Billy paid no attention whatever to the stupid proceeding of getting the house in order for tenants.

On this last morning she sat at the breakfast table studying these two who had been her companions for seven years, and who suspected so little that this companionship was not to last for another seven years, for an indefinite time.  Billy was in a bad temper because her father was not taking Alfred and the car with them to the camp, as he had done for the two previous years.  Clarence, sullen as always under Billy’s disapproval, was pretending to read his paper.  He had a severe headache this morning, his face looked flushed and swollen.  He was dreading the twenty-four hours in a hot train, even though the Bowditches, going up in their own car to their own camp, had offered the Breckenridges its comparative comfort and coolness for the entire trip.

“Makes me so sick,” grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; “every time I want to move I’ll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car!  No fun at all!”

“Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear,” Rachael said pacifically.  She was quivering from head to foot with nervous excitement; the next few hours were all-important to her.  And, under the pressure of her own great emotions, Billy seemed only rather pitiful and young to-day, and even Clarence less a conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than he had seemed.  She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years; indeed a great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened her manner toward them both.  Her marriage had been a great disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but she was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary emotion was about to make this parting strangely hard.

“Yes, but it’s not the same thing,” Billy raged.  Rachael began a low-voiced reassurance to which the younger woman listened reluctantly, scowling over her omelette, and interposing an occasional protest.