“And you, Arthur?” asked Hiram in the same solemn, appealing tone.

“I should not ask Janet to marry me unless I was sure I could support her in the manner to which she is accustomed,” said Arthur.  “I certainly shouldn’t wish to be dependent upon her.”

“Then, your notion of marrying is that people get married for a living, for luxury.  I suppose you’d expect her to leave you if you lost your money?”

“That’s different,” said Arthur, restraining the impulse to reason with his illogical father whose antiquated sentimentalism was as unfitted to the new conditions of American life as were his ideas about work.

“You see, Hiram,” said Mrs. Whitney, good-humoredly, “your children outvote you.”

The master workman brought his fist down on the arm of his chair—­not a gesture of violence, but of dignity and power.  “I don’t stand for the notion that marriage is living in luxury and lolling in carriages and showing off before strangers.  I told you what my last word was, Matilda.”

Mrs. Whitney debated with herself full half a minute before she spoke.  In a tone that betrayed her all but departed hope of changing him, she said:  “It is a great shock to me to have you even pretend to be so heartless—­to talk of breaking these young people’s hearts—­just for a notion.”

“It’s better to break their hearts before marriage,” replied Hiram, “than to let them break their lives, and their hearts, too, on such marriages.  The girl that wants my son only if he has money to enable her to make a fool of herself, ain’t fit to be a wife—­and a mother.  As for Del and Ross—­The man that looks at what a woman has will never look at what she is—­and my daughter’s well rid of him.”

A painful silence, then Mrs. Whitney rose.  “If I hadn’t suspected, Hiram, that you intended to cheat your children out of their rights in order to get a reputation as a philanthropist, I’d not have brought this matter up at this time.  I see my instincts didn’t mislead me.  But I don’t give up hope.  I’ve known you too many years, Hiram Ranger, not to know that your heart is in the right place.  And, after you think it over, you will give up this wicked—­yes, wicked—­plan old Doctor Hargrave has taken advantage of your sickness to wheedle you into.”

Hiram, his face and hands like yellow wax, made no answer.  Arthur and Adelaide followed Mrs. Whitney from the room.  “Thank you, Mrs. Whitney,” said Arthur, gratefully, when they were out of his father’s hearing.  “I don’t know what has come over him of late.  He has gone back to his childhood and under the spell of the ideas that seemed, and no doubt were, right then.  I believe you have set him to thinking.  He’s the best father in the world when he is well and can see things clearly.”