She pushed Adelaide aside, and with uncertain steps went into the hall and up toward her own room.

CHAPTER XI

“SO SENSITIVE”

Adelaide was about to go in search of her brother when he came hunting her.  A good example perhaps excepted, there is no power for good equal to a bad example.  Arthur’s outburst before his mother and her, and in what seemed the very presence of the dead, had been almost as potent in turning Adelaide from bitterness as the influence her father’s personality, her father’s character had got over her in his last illness.  And now the very sight of her brother’s face, freely expressing his thoughts, since Ellen was not there to shame him, gave double force to the feelings her mother’s denunciations had roused in her.  “We’ve got to fight it, Del,” Arthur said, flinging himself down on the grass at her feet.  “I’ll see Torrey to-morrow morning.”

Adelaide was silent.

He looked fiercely at her.  “You’re going to help me, aren’t you?”

“I must have time to think,” she replied, bent on not provoking him to greater fury.

He raised himself to a sitting posture.  “What has that Hargrave fellow been saying to you?” he cried.  “You’ll have to break off with him.  His father—­the old scoundrel!—­got at father and took advantage of his illness and his religious superstition.  I know just how it was done.  We’ll bring it all out.”

Adelaide did not answer.

“What did Dory say to you?” repeated Arthur.

“He went as soon as I came out from mother,” she replied.  She thought it best not to tell him that Dory had stopped long enough to urge her to go to her brother, and to make and keep peace with him, no matter what he might say to anger her.  “Don’t you think,” she continued, “that you ought to see Janet and talk with her?”

Artie sank back and stared somberly at the ground.

“When is she coming?” asked his sister.

“I don’t know,” he answered surlily.  “Not at all, perhaps.  The Whitneys won’t especially care about having any of us in the family now.”  He looked furtively at Adelaide, as if he hoped she would protest that he was mistaken, would show him that Janet would be unchanged.

“Mrs. Whitney won’t,” said Adelaide.  “But Janet—­she’s different, I think.  She seems to be high-minded, and I believe she loves you.”

Arthur looked relieved, though Adelaide was too honest to have been able to make her tone as emphatic as her words.  Yes, Janet was indeed high-minded, he said to himself; did indeed love him.  Her high-mindedness and the angel purity of her love had often made him uneasy, not to say uncomfortable.  He hated to be at the trouble of pretenses; but Janet, living on a far higher plan than he, had simply compelled it.  To let her see his human weaknesses, to let her suspect that he was not as high-minded as she told him he was, to strip from himself the saintly