Adelaide reflected.  “It is better not to tell him,” she concluded.

Ellen was relieved.  “That’s common sense,” said she.  “And you can’t use too much common sense in marriage.  The woman’s got to have it, for the men never do where women are concerned.”  She reflected a few minutes, then, after a keen glance at her daughter and away, she said with an appearance 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 theatricals.  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.