arance of impersonality that evidenced diplomatic skill of no mean
order: "And there's this habit the women are getting nowadays of always
peeping into their heads and hearts to see what's going on. How can they
expect the cake to bake right if they're first at the fire door, then at
the oven door, openin' and shuttin' 'em, peepin' and pokin' and
tastin'--that's what _I'd_ like to know."

Adelaide looked at her mother's apparently unconscious face in surprise
and admiration. "What a sensible, wonderful woman you are, Ellen Ranger!"
she exclaimed, giving her mother the sisterly name she always gave her
when she felt a particular delight in the bond between them. And half to
herself, yet so that her mother heard, she added: "And what a fool your
daughter has been!"

"Nobody's born wise," said Ellen, "and mighty few takes the trouble
to learn."

At Point Helen the mourning livery of the lodge keeper and of the hall
servants prepared Ellen and her daughter for the correct and elegant
habiliments of woe in which Matilda and her son and daughter were garbed.
If Whitney had died before he began to lose his fortune, and while his
family were in a good humor with him because of his careless generosity,
or, rather, indifference to extravagance, he would have been mourned as
sincerely as it is possible for human beings to mourn one by whose death
they are to profit enormously in title to the material possessions they
have been trained to esteem above all else in the world. As it was, those
last few months of anxiety--Mrs. Whitney worrying lest her luxury and
social leadership should be passing, Ross exasperated by the daily
struggle to dissuade his father from fatuous enterprises--had changed
Whitney's death from a grief to a relief. However, "appearances"
constrained Ross to a decent show of sorrow, compelled Mrs. Whitney to a
still stronger exhibit. Janet, who in far-away France had not been
touched by the financial anxieties, felt a genuine grief that gave her an
admirable stimulus to her efflorescent oversoul. She had "prepared for
the worst," had brought from Paris a marvelous mourning wardrobe--dresses
and hats and jewelry that set off her delicate loveliness as it had never
been set off before. She made of herself an embodiment, an apotheosis,
rather, of poetic woe--and so, roused to emulation her mother's passion
for pose. Ross had refused to gratify them even to the extent of taking a
spectator's part in their refined t