Her placid gaze roved about the ceiling.  Mrs. Haviland gazed at her in silence.

“Rachael,” she said desperately, “will you talk to someone—­will you talk to Gardner?”

“Why should I?” Rachael sat up on the couch, the loosened mass of her beautiful hair falling about her shoulders.  “What has Gardner or anyone else to do with it?  It’s Clarence’s business, and my business, and it concerns nobody else!” she said warmly.  “You look on from the outside.  I’ve borne it for seven years!  I’m young, I’m only twenty-eight, and what is my life?  Keeping house for a man who insults me, and ignores me, who puts me second to his daughter, and has put me second since our wedding day—­making excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I want to do, never knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never having one cent of money to call my own!  I tell you there are days and days when I’m too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think!  Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with the Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis, and dancing, Clarence wasn’t sober one moment of the time, not one!  One night, when we were dancing—­but I won’t go into it!”

“I know,” Florence said hastily, rather frightened at this magnificent fury.  “I know, dear, it’s too bad—­it’s dreadful—­it’s a great shame.  But men are like that!  Now Gardner—­”

“All men aren’t like that!  Gardner does that sort of thing now and then, I know,” Rachael rushed on, “but Gardner is always sorry.  Gardner takes his place as a man of dignity in the world.  I am nothing to Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what Billy is!  I have borne it, and borne it, and now I just can’t—­ bear it—­any longer!”

And Rachael, to her own surprise and disgust, burst into bitter crying, and, stammering some incoherency about an aching head, she went to her own room and flung herself across the bed.  The suppressed excitement of the last few days found relief in a long fit of sobbing; Florence did not dare go near her.  The older woman tried to persuade herself that the resentment and bitterness of this unusual mood would be washed away, and that Rachael, after a nap and a bath, would feel more like herself, but nevertheless she went off to her game in a rather worried frame of mind, and gave but an imperfect attention to the question of hearts or lilies.

Rachael, heartily ashamed of what she would have termed her schoolgirlish display of emotion, came slowly to herself, dozed over a magazine, plunged into a cold bath, and at four o’clock dressed herself exquisitely for Mrs. Whittaker’s informal dinner.  Glowing like a rose in her artfully simple gown of pink and white checks, she went downstairs.

Florence had come in late, bearing a beautiful bit of pottery, the first prize, and was again in the throes of dressing, but Gardner was downstairs restlessly wandering about the dimly lighted rooms and halls.  He was fond of Rachael, and as they walked up and down the lawn together he tried, in a blunt and clumsy way, to show her his sympathy.