He laughed satirically.  “That’s what you think now,” said he.  “But, when the time came, you’d be married to Ross Whitney, and he’d show you how just father’s judgment of me was, how wicked it would be to break his last solemn wish and will, and how unfit I was to take care of money.  And you’d see it; and the will would stand.  Oh, you’d see it!  I know human nature.  If it was a small estate—­in those cases brothers and sisters always act generously—­no, not always.  Some of ’em, lots of ’em, quarrel and fight over a few pieces of furniture and crockery.  But in a case of a big estate, who ever heard of the one that was favored giving up his advantage unless he was afraid of a scandal, or his lawyers advised him he might as well play the generous, because he’d surely lose the suit?”

“Of course, Arthur, I can’t be sure what I’d do,” she replied gently; “but I hope I’d not be made altogether contemptible by inheriting a little money.”

“But it wouldn’t seem contemptible,” he retorted.  “It’d be legal and sensible, and it’d seem just.  You’d only be obeying a dead father’s last wishes and guarding the interests of your husband and your children.  They come before brothers.”

“But not before self-respect,” she said very quietly.  She put her arm around his neck and pressed her cheek against his.  “Arthur—­dear—­dear—­” she murmured, “please don’t talk or think about this any more.  It—­it—­hurts.”  And there were hot tears in her eyes, and at her heart a sense of sickness and of fright; for his presentation of the other side of the case made her afraid of what she might do, or be tempted to do, in the circumstances he pictured.  She knew she wouldn’t—­at least, not so long as she remained the person she then was.  But how long would that be?  How many years of association with her new sort of friends—­with the sort Ross had long been—­with the sort she was becoming more and more like—­how many, or, rather, how few years would it take to complete the process of making her over into a person who would do precisely what Arthur had pictured?

Arthur had said a great deal more than he intended—­more, even, than he believed true.  For a moment he felt ashamed of himself; then he reminded himself that he wasn’t really to blame; that, but for his father’s harshness toward him, he would never have had such sinister thoughts about him or Adelaide.  Thus his apology took the form of an outburst against Hiram.  “Father has brought out the worst there is in me!” he exclaimed.  “He is goading me on to—­”

He looked up; Hiram was in the doorway.  He sprang to his feet.  “Yes, I mean it!” he cried, his brain confused, his blood on fire.  “I don’t care what you do.  Cut me off!  Make me go to work like any common laborer!  Crush out all the decency there is in me!”

The figure of the huge old man was like a storm-scarred statue.  The tragedy of his countenance filled his son and daughter with awe and terror.  Then, slowly, like a statue falling, he stiffly tilted forward, crashed at full length face downward on the floor.  He lay as he had fallen, breathing heavily, hoarsely.  And they, each tightly holding the other’s hand like two little children, stood pale and shuddering, unable to move toward the stricken colossus.