"Long ago," said Billy, and Elinor, reaching for her own wrap, declared herself ready. "I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl added as she turned to follow their guest from the room. "Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said casually, seating herself at the dressing-table without a glance at her stepdaughter. For a moment Miss Breckenridge stood irresolute in the doorway, then she reluctantly came in. "You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman indifferently. "When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you may do as you please. But until then--either see a little less of Joe Pickering, or else come right out in the open about it, and tell your father you want to see him here. This silly business of telephoning and writing and meeting him, here, there, and everywhere, has got to stop." Billy stared steadily at her stepmother, her breath coming quick and high, her cheeks red. "Who said I met him--places?" she said, in a seventeen-year-old-girl's idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this was a shrug, a smile, and a motherly request not to be a fool. There was silence for a moment. Then Billy said recklessly: "I like him. And you can't make me deny it!" "Like him if you want to," said Mrs. Breckenridge, "although what you can see in a man twice your age--with his particular history--However, it's your affair. But you'll have to tell your father." Billy shut her lips mutinously, her cheeks still scarlet. "I don't see why!" she burst forth proudly, at last. To this Mrs. Breckenridge offered no argument. Carefully filing a polished fingertip she said quietly: "I didn't suppose you would." "And I think that if you tell him YOU interfere in a matter that doesn't in the LEAST concern you," Billy pursued hotly, uncomfortably eager to strike an answering spark, and reduce the conversation to a state where mutual concessions might be in order. "You have no BUSINESS to!" Her stepmother was silent. She put on a ring, regarded it thoughtfully on her spread fingers, and took it off again. "In the first place," Billy said sullenly, "you'll tell him a lot of things that aren't so!" Silence. Outside the motor horn sounded impatiently. Billy suddenly came close to her stepmother, her dark, mobile little face quite transformed by anger. "You can tell him what you please," she said in a cold fury, "but I'll know WHY you did it--it's because you're jealous, and you want everyone in the world to be in love with YOU! You hate me because my father loves me, and you would do anything in the world to make trouble between us! I've known it ever since I was a little girl, even if I never have said it before! I--" She choked, and tears of youthful rage came into her eyes.