yes eloquent with dumb
misery, and Persis laid a friendly hand upon his arm as she answered
with reassuring certainty: "Don't you worry, Nelson. I feel it in my
bones that Charlotte's going to be better before long."

"I'd as soon take your say-so as any doctor's." The big man looked at
her gratefully. "Come in as often as you can, Persis. There ain't
nobody we'd rather see."

He tramped into the house, armed in his splendid masculine obtuseness,
stooped to kiss his wife's hot cheek, and said, as was inevitable, the
last thing he should have thought of saying.

"Saw Persis Dale out here just now, and I'll be darned if she ain't
getting better looking every day."

"I can't see that that's enough to excuse profanity," said Mrs.
Richards witheringly. "Persis Dale is a coarse scheming creature."
Then as her husband burst into astonished protests, she showed signs of
hysteria.

"Oh, of course you'll stand up for her. I wouldn't have expected
anything else. You go out to the ice-chest, Nelson Richards, and heat
up that cup of beef tea you set away last night." Left to herself she
lay back upon the pillows, gazing at the ceiling with vindictive eyes.

"As long as she hasn't got the decency to wait till I'm in my grave,"
said Mrs. Richards tearfully, "I'll fool her. I'll show her there's
many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

CHAPTER XII

A CONFESSION TOO MANY

People were talking. That system of wireless telegraphy which
ante-dates Marconi's invention by ten thousand generations, had done
effective service. In the remotest farm-houses it was known that
Justin Ware had called on Persis Dale twice within a week. He came
between half past eight and nine, so said reliable rumor, and the
lateness of the hour of his arrival as well as of his departure, made
only too plain the relaxing influence of city life on country-bred
standards.

Annabel Sinclair heard and turned faint and sick, so closely does
jealousy counterfeit love. As far as Justin Ware was concerned, the
news of his untimely death would have affected Annabel less than the
information that the chops had not been sent from the butcher's in time
for dinner. But he was a man and that he should choose to spend two
evenings in a week with another woman, after she had given him to
understand that his society would be agreeable to herself, argued a
decline in her powers of fascination. She told herself that she hated
Persis, that she hated J