or three times she dropped little hints about his wife.
Didn't say _wife_ right out, you know. It was kind of veiled, but you
couldn't help understanding."

"Was there any name signed?" asked Annabel Sinclair, opening her lips
for the first time that afternoon. She herself had long before
realized the unadvisability of signing one's name to one's epistolary
efforts.

"'Twas just signed 'Enid.' There was a monogram on the paper, but I
couldn't make it out. Seems as if you could find 'most any letter in a
monogram. The paper was nice and heavy and all scented up. Poor Mis'
Thompson!"

"She ought to leave him," exploded Susan Fitzgerald. "And I shouldn't
blame her a mite if she poisoned his coffee first. If women could
vote, they'd send a man like that to the gallows."

Mrs. West championed the absent sex. "In a case of that sort, Susan,
you can't put all the blame off on to the man. There's a woman in it,
too, every time, and the one's as deep in the mud as the other is in
the mire. And like as not," continued Mrs. West, a tell-tale tension
in her voice, "he was a nice, clean-minded young man when she came
along, making eyes at him, like a snake charming a sparrow. I'm not
crazy about voting, but if I had the ballot, I'd vote for locking up
those kind of women and keeping every last one of 'em at hard labor for
the term of their natural lives."

The moment was electric, and Mrs. Warren hastily proffered her services
as a lightning-rod. "Is she going to leave him, do you think?"

"Well, I guess she's got a crazy notion in her head that maybe he can
explain. I tried to talk her out of that idea. As I said to her, a
man capable of anything of that sort won't stop at lying out of it.
And I should judge," concluded Mrs. Leveridge, "that that young Mr.
Thompson would be capable of a real convincing lie. He don't look
wicked, but he does look smart."

The outer door opened and closed with an impetus just short of a slam,
irresistibly suggestive in some obscure fashion, of the entrance of
ardent youth. "I didn't think 'twas worth while to ring," explained
Persis Dale, nodding to the right and left as she advanced to greet her
hostess. "Sorry to be so late. I guess you've got everything pretty
nearly settled by now." She bowed rather stiffly to Annabel Sinclair,
sitting silent in her corner, and acknowledged with reluctant
admiration that the woman certainly was a credit to her dressmaker.

A guilty