"How are you this morning?" Rachael asked perfunctorily, with her

quick glance moving from the books on the table to the wood fire

burning lazily behind brass firedogs. Everything was in perfect

order, Helda's touch visible everywhere.

"Fine," Clarence answered, also perfunctorily. His coffee was

untouched, and the cigarette in his long holder had gone out, but

Billy was disposing of eggs, toast, bacon, and cream with youthful

zest. Clarence's hot, sick gaze rested almost with hostility upon

his wife's cool beauty; in a gray linen gown, with a transparent

white ruffle turned back from her white throat, she looked as

fresh as the fresh spring morning.

"Headache?" said the nicely modulated, indifferent voice.

To this solicitude Clarence made no answer. A dark, ugly look came

into his face, and he turned his eyes sullenly and wearily away.

"How was the Chase dinner, Bill?" pursued the cheerful visitor,

unabashed.

"Same old thing," Carol answered briefly.

"You're not up to the Perrys' lunch to-day, are you, Clancy?"

"Oh, my God, no!" burst from the sufferer.

"Well, I'll telephone them. If Florence comes in this morning I'm

going to say you're asleep, so keep quiet up here. Do you want to

see Greg again?"

"No, I don't!" said Clarence, with unexpected vigor. "Steer him

off if you can. Preaching at me last night as if he'd never

touched anything stronger than malted milk!"

"I don't imagine I'll have much trouble steering him off," Rachael

said coldly. "His Sundays are pretty well occupied without--sick

calls!"

There was a delicate and scornful emphasis on the word "sick" that

brought the blood to Clarence Breckenridge's face. Billy flushed,

too, and an angry light flamed into her eyes.

"That's not fair, Rachael!" the girl said hotly, "and you know

it's not!"

The glances of the three crossed. Billy was breathing hard;

Clarence, shakily holding a fresh match to his cold cigarette,

sent a lowering look from daughter to wife. Rachael shrugged her

shoulders.

"Well, I'll have my breakfast," she said, and turning she went

from the room and downstairs to the sunshiny breakfast porch.

There were flowers on the little round table, a bright glitter was

struck from silver and glass, an icy grapefruit, brimming with

juice, stood at her place. The little room was all windows, and

to-day the cretonne curtains had been pushed back to show the

garden brave in new spring green, the exquisite freshness of elm

and locust trees that bordered it, and far away the slopes of the

golf green, with the scarlet and white dots that were early

players moving over it. Sunshine flooded the world, great plumes

of white and purple lilac rustled in their tents of green leaves,

a bee blundered from the blossoming wistaria vine into the room,

and blundered out again. Far off Rachael heard a cock breaking the

Sabbath stillness with a prolonged crow, and as the clock in the

dining-room chimed one silver note for the half-hour, the bells of

the church in the little village of Belvedere Bay began to ring.




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