"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 Justin, that she loathed life and the miserable business of being a woman, and she ended by finding pretexts for daily excursions past the Clematis House, always arrayed in the most fetching street costumes. When on the third day she encountered Justin, that gentleman responded gallantly to her pensive tender reproach. His was no Jericho heart, to demand a seven-day siege. He had found Persis Dale unexpectedly interesting, but Annabel was unexpectedly pretty, and a liking for pickles does not preclude a taste for sweets. Thomas Hardin's married sister, Mrs. Gibson, heard the news with consternation. She had long been aware of the state of her brother's affections, this indeed arguing no especial insight, since an infant in arms would have possessed sufficient intuition to read the heart of the guileless Thomas. Mrs. Gibson had regarded Persis in the proprietary light of a prospective sister-in-law, even going so far as to criticize her with the frank freedom which is the prerogative of kinship. When the first rumor of Justin's attentions reached the good woman's ears, she made a hurried trip to town for the sole purpose of interviewing her brother.