heatricals. The coming of Mrs. Ranger
and Adelaide gave them an audience other than servile; they proceeded to
strive to rise to the opportunity. The result of this struggle between
mother and daughter was a spectacle so painful that even Ellen,
determined to see only sincerity, found it impossible not to suspect a
grief that could find so much and such language in which to vent itself.
She fancied she appreciated why Ross eyed his mother and sister with
unconcealed hostility and spoke almost harshly when they compelled him to
break his silence.

Adelaide hardly gave the two women a thought. She was surprised to find
that she was looking at Ross and thinking of him quite calmly and most
critically. His face seemed to her trivial, with a selfishness that more
than suggested meanness, the eyes looking out from a mind which
habitually entertained ideas not worth a real man's while. What was the
matter with him--"or with me?" What is he thinking about? Why is he
looking so mean and petty? Why had he no longer the least physical
attraction for her? Why did her intense emotions of a few brief weeks
ago seem as vague as an unimportant occurrence of many years ago? What
had broken the spell? She could not answer her own puzzled questions;
she simply knew that it was so, that any idea that she did, or ever
could, love Ross Whitney was gone, and gone forever. "It's so," she
thought. "What's the difference why? Shall I never learn to let the
stove doors alone?"

As soon as lunch was over Matilda took Ellen to her boudoir and Ross went
away, leaving Janet and Adelaide to walk up and down the shaded west
terrace with its vast outlook upon the sinuous river and the hills. To
draw Janet from the painful theatricals, she took advantage of a casual
question about the lynching, and went into the details of that red
evening as she had not with anyone. It was now almost two months into the
past; but all Saint X was still feverish from it, and she herself had
only begun again to have unhaunted and unbroken sleep. While she was
relating Janet forgot herself; but when the story was told--all of it
except Adelaide's own part; that she entirely omitted--Janet went back to
her personal point of view. "A beautiful love story!" she exclaimed. "And
right here in prosaic Saint X!"

"Is it Saint X that is prosaic," said Adelaide, "or is it we, in failing
to see the truth about familiar things?"

"Perhaps," replied Janet, in the tone that means "n