"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.