She said nothing, simply looked unutterable melancholy, and let her hand lie listlessly in his until he dropped it.  He looked back at her when he reached the door.  She seemed so sad that he was about to return to her side.  She sighed heavily, gazed at him, and said, “Good-by, Arthur.”  After that he had no alternative.  He went.  “I must wait until she is calm,” he said to himself.  “She is so delicately strung.”

As he was driving toward the hotel, his gloom in his face, he did not see Mrs. Whitney dash past and give him an anxious searching glance, and sink back in her carriage reassured somewhat.  She had heard that he was on the Chicago express—­had heard it from her masseuse, who came each morning before she was up.  She had leaped to the telephone, had ordered a special train, and had got herself into it and off for her Chicago home by half-past eight.  “That sentimental girl, full of high ideals—­what mayn’t she do!” she was muttering, almost beside herself with anxiety.  “No doubt he’ll try and induce her to run away with him.”  And the rushing train seemed to creep and crawl.

She burst into the house like a dignified whirlwind.  “Where’s Miss Janet?” she demanded of the butler.

“Still in the blue salon, ma’am, I think,” he replied.  “Mr. Arthur Ranger just left a few moments ago.”

Clearing her surface of all traces of agitation, Mrs. Whitney went into the presence of her daughter.  “Mamma!” cried Janet, starting up.  “Has anything happened?”

“Nothing, nothing, dear,” replied her mother, kissing her tenderly.  “I was afraid my letter might have miscarried.  And, when I heard that Arthur had slipped away to Chicago, I came myself.  I’ve brought you up so purely and innocently that I became alarmed lest he might lead you into some rash sentimentality.  As I said in my letter, if Arthur had grown up into a strong, manly character, I should have been eager to trust my daughter to him.  But my doubts about him were confirmed by the will.  And—­he is simply a fortune-hunter now.”

Janet had hidden her face in her handkerchief.  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed.  “You wrong him, mother.”

“You haven’t encouraged him, Janet!” cried Mrs. Whitney.  “After what I’ve been writing you?”

“The loss of his money hasn’t made any difference about him with me,” said Janet, her pure, sweet face lighting up with the expression that made her mother half-ashamed of her own worldliness.

“Of course not!  Of course not, Janet,” said she.  “No child of mine could be mercenary without being utterly false to my teachings.”

Janet’s expression was respectful, yet not confirmatory.  She had often protested inwardly against the sordid views of life which her mother unconsciously held and veiled with scant decency in the family circle in her unguarded moments.  But she had fought against the contamination, and proudly felt that her battle for the “higher plane” was successful.