Adelaide thought not; she thought it, on the contrary, an admirable device to "save the face" of a mercenary lover posing as a sentimentalist and money-spurner. But she merely said, "I think it's most characteristic, most aristocratic." She knew Janet, how shrewd she was, how thoroughly she understood the "coarse side of life." She added, "And your father'll come round." "I wish I could believe it," sighed Janet. "The Saint Berthès have an exaggerated notion of papa's wealth. Besides, they need a good deal. They were robbed horribly by those dreadful revolutionists. They used to own all this part of the country. All these people round here with their little farms were once the peasants of Aristide's ancestors. Now--even this chateau has a mortgage on it. I couldn't keep back the tears, while Aristide was telling me." Adelaide thought of Charles Whitney listening to that same recital, and almost laughed. "Well, I feel sure it will turn out all right," she said. "Your mother'll see to that. And I believe you'll be very, very happy." Theatricals in private life was Janet's passion--why should she not be happy? Frenchmen were famous for their politeness and consideration to their wives; Aristide would never let her see or feel that she bored him, that her reverence for the things he was too intelligent and modern not to despise appealed to him only through his sense of humor. Janet would push her shrewd, soulful way into social leadership, would bring her children up to be more aristocratic than the children of the oldest aristocrats. Adelaide smiled as she pictured it all--smiled, yet sighed. She was not under Janet's fixed and unshakable delusions. She saw that high-sounding titles were no more part of the personalities bearing them than the mass of frankly false hair so grandly worn by Aristide's grand-aunt was part of the wisp-like remnant of natural head covering. But that other self of hers, so reluctant to be laughed or frowned down and out by the self that was Hiram Ranger's daughter, still forced her to share in the ancient, ignorant allegiance to "appearances." She did not appreciate how bored she was, how impatient to be back with Dory, the never monotonous, the always interesting, until she discovered that Janet, with her usual subtlety, had arranged for them to stay another week, had made it impossible for her to refuse without seeming to be disobliging and even downright rude. They were to have returned to Paris on a Monday. On Sunday she wrote Dory to telegraph for her on Tuesday.