He was confident that he was in the right, that his case was different from Janet's; confident also that Adelaide would feel that in defending his rights he was also defending hers that were to be.

But before Del there had risen the scene after the reading of her own father's will.

She recalled her rebellious thoughts, saw again Arthur's fine face distorted by evil passions, heard again her mother's terrible, just words: "Don't trample on your father's grave, Arthur Ranger! I'll put you both out of the house! Go to the Whitneys, where you belong!" And then she saw Arthur as he now was, and herself the wife of Dory Hargrave.

And she for the first time realized, as we realize things only when they have become an accepted and unshakable basic part of our lives, what her father had done, what her father was.
Hiram had won his daughter.
"We are going now," said Ellen, coming from the stupor of shame and horror into which this volcanic disgorging of the secret minds and hearts of the Whitneys had plunged her.

And the expression she fixed first upon Janet, then upon Ross, then upon Matilda, killed any disposition they might have had to try to detain her.