ich, after years of thinking daily about the matter,
she had decided was a shade more perfect than the left.

If one dim eye makes a man king among blind men--to translate to the
vernacular Verbena's elegant reasoning--an income, however trifling, if
it have no taint of toil, no stench of sweat upon it, makes its possessor
entitled to royal consideration in a family of paupers and dead beats,
degraded by harboring a breadwinner of an Estelle. No sudden recipient of
a dazzling, drenching shower of wealth was ever more exalted than was
Verbena, once in possession of "_my_ legacy." Until the Rev. Eliot
Wilmot's posthumous blessing descended upon her, the Wilmots lived
together in comparative peace and loving kindness. They were all, except
for their mania of genealogy, good-humored, extremely well-mannered
people, courteous as much by nature as by deliberate intent. But, with
the coming of the blessing, peace and friendliness in that family were at
an end. Old Preston Wilmot and Arden railed unceasingly against the
"traitor" Eliot; Verbena defended him. Their mother and Estelle were
drawn into the battle from time to time, Estelle always against her will.
Before Verbena had been a woman of property three months, she was hating
her father and brother for their sneers and insults, Arden had gone back
to drinking, and the old gentleman was in a savage and most ungentlemanly
humor from morning until night.

Estelle, the "black sheep" ever since she began to support them by
engaging in trade, drew aloof now, was at home as little as she could
contrive, often ate a cold supper in the back of her shop. She said
nothing to Lorry of the family shame; she simply drew nearer to him. And
out of this changed situation came, unconsciously to herself, a deep
contempt for her father and her brother, a sense that she was indeed as
alien as the Wilmots so often alleged, in scorn of her and her shop;
Verbena's income went to buy adornments for herself, dresses that would
give the hands a fitting background; Estelle's earnings went to her
mother, who distributed them, the old gentleman and Arden ignoring whence
and how the money came.

As Estelle and Lorry lingered on the porch of the Villa d'Orsay that
August evening, alone in the universe under that vast, faintly luminous,
late-twilight sky, Arden Wilmot came up the lawn. Neither Lorry nor
Estelle saw or heard him until his voice, rough with drink and passion,
savagely stung them with, "W