with ringers that trembled. "This is very important." Silence, as
she read, her eager glance leaping along the lines. Her expression became
terrible; she burst out in a voice that was both anger and despair: "No
will! He wasn't just trying to torment me when he said he hadn't made
one. No will! Nothing but the draft of a scheme to leave everything to
Tecumseh--there's your Hiram's work, Ellen!"

Adelaide's gentle pressure on her mother's arm was unnecessary; it was
too evident that Matilda, beside herself, could not be held responsible
for anything she said. There was no pretense, no "oversoul" in her
emotion now. She was as different from the Matilda of the luncheon table
as the swollen and guttered face of woe in real life is different from
the graceful tragedy of the stage.

"No will; what of it?" said Ellen gently. "It won't make the least
difference. There's just you and the children."

Adelaide, with clearer knowledge of certain dark phases of human nature
and of the Whitney family, hastily interposed. "Yes, we must go," said
she. "Good-by, Mrs. Whitney," and she put out her hand.

Mrs. Whitney neither saw nor heard. "Ellen!" she cried, her voice like
her wild and haggard face. "What do you think of such a daughter as mine
here? Her father--"

Janet, with eyes that dilated and contracted strangely, interrupted with
a sweet, deprecating, "Good-by, Adelaide dear. As I told you, I am
leaving to-night--"

There Ross laid his hand heavily on Janet's shoulder. "You are going to
stay, young lady," he said between his teeth, "and hear what your mother
has to say about you." His voice made Adelaide shudder, even before she
saw the black hate his eyes were hurling at his sister.

"Yes, we want you, Ellen, and you, Del, to know her as she is," Mrs.
Whitney now raged on. "When she married, her father gave her a dowry,
bought that title for her--paid as much as his whole fortune now amounts
to. He did it solely because I begged him to. She knows the fight I had
to win him over. And now that he's gone, without making a will, she says
she'll have her _legal_ rights! Her _legal_ rights! She'll take
_one-third_ of what he left. She'll rob her brother and her mother!"

Janet was plainly reminding herself that she must not forget that she was
a lady and a marchioness. In a manner in which quiet dignity was mingled
with a delicate soul's shrinking from such brawling vulgarity as this
that was being forced upon her, she said,