ened your father's
life. And I tell you, Arthur Ranger, till you change your heart, you're
no son of mine."

"Mother! Mother!" cried Arthur, rushing from the room.

Mrs. Ranger looked vacantly at the place where he had been, dropped into
a chair and burst into a storm of tears.

"Call him back, mother," entreated Del.

"No! no!" sobbed Ellen Ranger. "He spoke agin' my dead! I'll not forgive
him till his heart changes."

Adelaide knelt beside her mother and tried to put her arms around her.
But her mother shrank away. "Don't touch me!" she cried; "leave me
alone. God forgive me for having bore children that trample on their
father's grave. I'll put you both out of the house--" and she started up
and her voice rose to a shriek. "Yes--I'll put you both out! Your
foolishness has ate into you like a cancer, till you're both rotten. Go
to the Whitneys. Go among the lepers where you belong. You ain't fit for
decent people."

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