story that the Frenchman had departed on learning that Charles Whitney had not yet reached the stage of fashionable education at which the American father appreciates titles and begins to listen without losing his temper when the subject of settlements is broached.  He remembered now that Janet had been low-spirited for some time after the Frenchman took himself and title and eloquent eyes and “soulful, stimulating conversation” to another market.  “What a damn fool I’ve been!” Arthur all but shouted at his own image in a mirror which by chance was opposite him.  A glance, and his eyes shifted; somehow, it gave him no pleasure, but the reverse, to see that handsome face and well-set-up, well-dressed figure.

“She was marrying me for money,” he went on, when he had once more seated himself, legs crossed and cigarette going reflectively.  The idea seemed new to him—­that people with money could marry for money, just as a capitalist goes only where he hopes to increase his capital.  But on examining it more closely, he was surprised to find that it was not new at all.  “What am I so virtuous about?” said he.  “Wasn’t I after money, too?  If our circumstances were reversed, what would I be doing?” He could find but one honest answer.  “No doubt I’d be trying to get out of it, and if I didn’t, it’d be because I couldn’t see or make a way.”  To his abnormally sensitized nerves the whole business began to exude a distinct, nauseating odor.  “Rotten—­that’s the God’s truth,” thought he.  “Father was right!”

But there he drew back; he must be careful not to let anger sweep him into conceding too much.  “No—­life’s got to be lived as the world dictates,” he hastened to add.  “I see now why father did it, but he went too far.  He forgot my rights.  The money is mine.  And, by God, I’ll get it!” And again he started up; and again he was caught and put out of countenance by his own image in the mirror.  He turned away, shamefaced, but sullenly resolute.

Base?  He couldn’t deny it.  But he was desperate; also, he had been too long accustomed to grabbing things to which his conscience told him he had doubtful right or none.  “It’s mine.  I’ve been cheated out of it.  I’ll get it.  Besides—­” His mind suddenly cleared of the shadow of shame—­“I owe it to mother and Del to make the fight.  They’ve been cheated, too.  Because they’re too soft-hearted and too reverent of father’s memory, is that any reason, any excuse, for my shirking my duty by them?  If father were here to speak, I know he’d approve.”  Before him rose the frightful look in his father’s eyes in the earlier stage of that second and last illness. “That’s what the look meant!” he cried, now completely justified.  “He recovered his reason.  He wanted to undo the mischief that old sneak Hargrave had drawn him into!”

The case was complete:  His father had been insane when he made the will, had repented afterward, but had been unable to unmake it; his only son Arthur Ranger, now head of the family, owed it to the family’s future and to its two helpless and oversentimental women to right the wrong.  A complete case, a clear case, a solemn mandate.  Interest and duty were synonymous—­as always to ingenious minds.