He looked up, saw Mrs. Whitney coming toward him.  She was in a winter walking suit, though the day was warm.  She was engaged in the pursuit that was the chief reason for her three months’ retirement to the bluffs overlooking Saint X—­the preservation of her figure.  She hated exercise, being by nature as lazy, luxurious, and self-indulgent physically as she was alert and industrious mentally.  From October to July she ate and drank about what she pleased, never set foot upon the ground if she could help it, and held her tendency to hips in check by daily massage.  From July to October she walked two or three hours a day, heavily dressed, and had a woman especially to attend to her hair and complexion, in addition to the masseuse toiling to keep her cheeks and throat firm for the fight against wrinkles and loss of contour.

Arthur frowned at the interruption, then smoothed his features into a cordial smile; and at once that ugly mass of precipitated poison began to redistribute itself and hide itself from him.

“You’ve had a fall, haven’t you?”

He flushed.  She, judging with the supersensitive vanity of all her self-conscious “set,” thought the flush was at the implied criticism of his skill; but he was far too good a rider to care about his misadventure, and it was her unconscious double meaning that stung him.  She turned; they walked together.  After a brief debate as to the time for confessing his “fall,” which, at best, could remain a secret no longer than Monday, he chose the present.  “Father’s begun to cut up rough,” said he, and his manner was excellent.  “He’s taken away my allowance, and I’m to go to work at the mill.”  He was yielding to the insidious influence of her presence, was dropping rapidly back toward the attitude as well as the accent of “our set.”

At his frank disclosure Mrs. Whitney congratulated herself on her shrewdness so heartily that she betrayed it in her face; but Arthur did not see.  “I suppose your mother can do nothing with him.”  This was spoken in a tone of conviction.  She always felt that, if she had had Hiram to deal with, she would have been fully as successful with him as she thought she had been with Charles Whitney.  She did not appreciate the fundamental difference in the characters of the two men.  Both were iron of will; but there was in Whitney—­and not in Hiram—­a selfishness that took the form of absolute indifference to anything and everything which did not directly concern himself—­his business or his physical comfort.  Thus his wife had had her way in all matters of the social career, and he would have forced upon her the whole responsibility for the children if she had not spared him the necessity by assuming it.  He cheerfully paid the bills, no matter what they were, because he thought his money’s power to buy him immunity from family annoyances one of its chief values.  She, and everyone else, thought she ruled him; in fact, she not only did not rule him, but had not even influence with him in the smallest trifle of the matters he regarded as important.