Who else, her friends wondered, could have cleared the social
horizon for Paula Breckenridge's daughter so effectively? With
what brisk resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless
European wanderings, cropped the child's artificially curled hair,
given away the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks
and hats. Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had
entered Miss Proctor's select school, entered Miss Roger's select
dancing class, entered Professor Darling's expensive riding
classes. Billy, in dark-blue Peter Thompsons, in black stockings
and laced boots, had been dropped in among other little girls in
Peter Thompsons and laced boots, little girls with the approved
names of Whittaker and Bowditch, Moran and Merridew and Parmalee.
Billy had never doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the
new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed
with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and
discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied
little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress,
knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he
could ever do himself.
But Rachael, if she had expected reward, reaped none. Her husband
was a supremely selfish man, and his daughter inherited his
sublime ability to protect his own pleasure at any cost. Carol
admired her step-mother, but she was an indolent and luxury-loving
little soul, and even as early as her twelfth or fourteenth year
she had been deeply flattered by the evidences of her own power
over her father. Into her youthful training no reverence for
parents--real or adopted--had been infused; she called her father
"Clancy," as some of his intimate friends called him, and he
delighted to take her orders and bow to her pretty tyranny.
Before she was sixteen he began to take her about with him: to
dances, to the theatre, and for long trips in his car. He entered
eagerly into her young friendships, frantic to prove himself as
young at heart as she. He paid her the extravagant compliments of
a lover, and gave her her grandmother's beautiful jewelry, as well
as every trinket that caught her eye.
And Billy accepted his attentions with a finished coquetry that
was far from childlike, a flush on her satin cheek, a dimple
puckering the corner of her mouth, and silky lashes lowered over
her satisfied eyes. She was inevitably precocious in many ways,
but she was young enough still to fancy herself one of the
irresistible beauties and belles of the world, and to flaunt a
perfectly conscious arrogance in the eyes of all other women.
All this was bewildering and painful to Rachael. She had never
loved her husband--love entered into none of her relationships--
her marriage had been only a step in the steady progress of her
life toward the position she desired in the world. But she had
liked him. She had liked his child, and she had come into the new
arrangement kindly and gallantly determined to make the venture at
least as profitable to them both as it was to her.