Mrs. Jones did talk it over with Millie. Also, she had several prolonged interviews with Thomas on the subject, and three days later she put her name to the petition which asked for a divorce from Bill Jones without so much as giving the document a thorough reading. Whatever Thomas proposed was to her, by the very fact of its being his idea, a thing worthy to be done. Millie, being of the same turn of mind, aided her in accepting his decision. And it was only when the first publication of summons appeared in the Reno papers that her heart sank at the words which characterized Bill as a drunkard and a man who was cruel to his wife--lies which Thomas justified as necessary to strengthen the one truthful ground for the divorce--that of failure to provide. Even that Mrs. Jones felt was beside the truth, for although Bill had never exerted himself needlessly, he had performed the chores, gone after the mail, made beds, and, by his gift to her on their marriage day of his three hundred and twenty acres, which were far the better portion of the property, he had made some slight concession to his responsibilities. Bill's digressions had been those of omission rather than those of commission, and Mrs. Jones's misgivings were frequent during the three months that followed. In the mean time, Thomas and Hammond were quick to inaugurate a new regime at the hotel. Mrs. Jones and Millie remained on in the capacity of guests, while a clerk and a housekeeper were brought from the city to take over the management. Modern improvements and equipment soon turned it into a hostelry that verged on the fashionable. With the early spring freshet augmenting the waterfall and the stream into a cataract whose potential horse-power did not escape Everett Hammond, he made a hurried trip from San Francisco with an official of the Pacific Railroad and succeeded in persuading the company to advance a comfortable sum of money for an option on the Jones property. Mrs. Jones and Millie, fretting under the suspense and without funds, were given a small amount to tide them over until the sale should be consummated, when they were to receive a large block of certificates in the Golden Gate Land Company.