And half to herself, yet so that her mother heard, she added: "And what a fool your daughter has been!" "Nobody's born wise," said Ellen, "and mighty few takes the trouble to learn." At Point Helen the mourning livery of the lodge keeper and of the hall servants prepared Ellen and her daughter for the correct and elegant habiliments of woe in which Matilda and her son and daughter were garbed.
If Whitney had died before he began to lose his fortune, and while his family were in a good humor with him because of his careless generosity, or, rather, indifference to extravagance, he would have been mourned as sincerely as it is possible for human beings to mourn one by whose death they are to profit enormously in title to the material possessions they have been trained to esteem above all else in the world.

As it was, those last few months of anxiety--Mrs.Whitney worrying lest her luxury and social leadership should be passing, Ross exasperated by the daily struggle to dissuade his father from fatuous enterprises--had changed Whitney's death from a grief to a relief.

However, "appearances" constrained Ross to a decent show of sorrow, compelled Mrs.Whitney to a still stronger exhibit.

Janet, who in far-away France had not been touched by the financial anxieties, felt a genuine grief that gave her an admirable stimulus to her efflorescent oversoul.

She had "prepared for the worst," had brought from Paris a marvelous mourning wardrobe--dresses and hats and jewelry that set off her delicate loveliness as it had never been set off before.