let. "Don't you know, in your own mind, just as
well as that you're standing there, that that was Rose Aldrich?"

Jimmy dropped down into a big chair. "Well," he said, "I'm willing to
accept it as a working hypothesis."

"You men!" said Violet.

Dinner was announced just then, and the theme had to be dismissed until
at last they were left alone with the dessert.

"What breaks me all up," Violet burst out, abandoning the pretense of
picking over her walnuts, and showing, with a little outflung gesture,
how impatient she had been to take it up, "what breaks me all up is how
this'll hit Frederica. She just adores Rodney and she's been simply
wonderful to Rose--for him, of course."

Neither of the men said anything, but she felt a little stir of protest
from both of them and qualified the last phrase.

"Oh, she liked her for herself, too. We all did. We couldn't help it.
But you haven't any idea, either of you, of even the beginning of what
Frederica did for her--steered her just right, and pushed her just
enough, and all the while seeming not to be doing a thing. Freddy's such
a peach at that! And she's been so big-hearted about it; never even
_felt_ jealous. If it had been me, and I'd adored a brother like that,
and he'd gone off and fallen in love with a girl nobody knew, just
because he saw her in a wrestling-match with a street-car conductor, I'd
have wanted, whatever I might have done, to--well, show her up. And yet,
even after Rose had left him, for no reason at all, Freddy ..."

"You're just guessing at all that, you know," her husband interrupted
quietly. "You don't _know_ a single thing about it."

"Well, what reason _could_ Rose have for leaving him?" she flashed back.
"Hasn't Rodney been perfectly crazy about her ever since he married her?
Has he ever _seen_ another woman the last two years? Or maybe you think
he's been coming home drunk and beating her with a trunk-strap."

But John stuck to his guns. "You don't even know she's left him. The
only thing you do know is that Bella Forrester met Frederica one day,
about a week before Christmas, in the railway station at Los Angeles."

"Well, can you tell me any other reason," Violet demanded, "why Freddy
should dash off alone to California, right in the middle of the holiday
rush, without saying a word to anybody, and be back here in just a week;
and not tell even _me_ what she'd been doing, or where she'd been, so
that if Bella hadn't written to me, I'd