When Vagen was out of the way, Charles repeated:  “I’m going this afternoon.”  His listless eyes were gazing vacantly at the carved rosewood ceiling.  His hands—­the hands of a corpse—­looked horribly like sheathed, crumpled claws in the gold silk cuffs of his dark-blue dressing gown.  His nose, protruding from his sunken cheeks, seemed not like a huge beak, but indeed a beak.

“But Janet—­” began Mrs. Whitney, thinking as she spoke that he surely would “not be spared to us much longer.”

“Janet can follow—­or stay here—­or—­I don’t care what she does,” droned Whitney.  “Do you suppose I’m thinking about anybody but myself now?  Would you, if you were in my fix.  I should say,” he amended cynically, “will you, when you’re in my fix?”

“Charles!” exclaimed Matilda.

Whitney’s smile checked her.  “I’m not a fool,” he rambled on.  “Do you suppose I haven’t seen what was going on?  Do you suppose I don’t know all of you wish I was out of it?  Yes, out of it.  And you needn’t bother to put on that shocked look; it doesn’t fool me.  I used to say:  ’I’ll be generous with my family and give ’em more than they’d have if I was gone.’  ‘No children waiting round eager for me to pass off,’ said I, ‘so that they can divide up my fortune.’  I’ve said that often and often.  And I’ve acted on it.  And I’ve raised up two as pampered, selfish children as ever lived.  And now—­The last seven months I’ve been losing money hand over fist.  Everything I’ve gone into has turned out bad.  I’m down to about half what I had a year ago—­maybe less than half.  And you and Ross—­and no doubt that marchioness ex-daughter of mine—­all know it.  And you’re afraid if I live on, I’ll lose more, maybe everything.  Do you deny it?”

Matilda was unable to speak.  She had known he was less rich; but half!—­“maybe less!” The cuirass of steel, whalebone, kid, and linen which molded her body to a fashionable figure seemed to be closing in on her heart and lungs with a stifling clutch.

“No, you don’t deny it.  You couldn’t,” Whitney drawled on.  “And so my ‘indulgent father’ damned foolishness ends just where I might have known it’d end.  We’ve brought up the children to love money and show off, instead of to love us and character and self-respect—­God forgive me!”

The room was profoundly silent:  Charles thinking drowsily, yet vividly, too, of his life; Matilda burning in anguish over the lost half, or more, of the fortune—­and Charles had always been secretive about his wealth, so she didn’t know how much the fortune was a year ago and couldn’t judge whether much or little was left!  Enough to uphold her social position?  Or only enough to keep her barely clear of the “middle class”?

Soon Whitney’s voice broke in upon her torments.  “I’ve been thinking a great deal, this last week, about Hiram Ranger.”

Matilda, startled, gave him a wild look.  “Charles!” she exclaimed.