The car had entered a white stone gateway, and was approaching a
certain charming country mansion, one that was not conspicuous
among a thousand others strewn over the neighboring hills and
valleys, but a beautiful home nevertheless. Vines climbed the
brick chimneys, and budding hydrangeas, in pots, topped the white
balustrades of the porch. A hundred little details of perfect
furnishing would have been taken for granted by the casual
onlooker, yet without its lawns, its awnings, its window boxes and
snowy curtaining, its glimpse of screened veranda and wicker
chairs, its trim assembly of garage, stable, and servants'
cottages, its porte-cochere, sleeping porches, and tennis court,
it would have seemed incomplete and uncomfortable to its owners.

Rachael Breckenridge neither liked it nor disliked it. It had been
her home for the seven years of her married life, except for the
month or two she spent every winter in a New York hotel. She had
never had any great happiness in it, to be sure, but then her life
had been singularly lacking in moments of real happiness, and she
had valued other elements, and desired other elements more. She
had not expected to be happy in this house, she had expected to be
rich and envied, and secure, and she was all of these things. That
they were not worth attaining, no one knew better than Rachael
now.

The house was of course a great care to her, the more so because
Billy was in it so little, and was so frankly eager for the time
when she should leave it and go to a house of her own, and because
Clarence was absolutely indifferent to it in his better moods, and
pleased with nothing when he was in the grip of his besetting sin.
The Breckenridges did little formal entertaining, but the man of