"I can't see that that's enough to excuse profanity," said Mrs.

Richards witheringly. "Persis Dale is a coa.r.s.e 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 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.

As good luck would have it, business was slack at the moment of her arrival, and Thomas left two lanky country-women to the care of his a.s.sistant, and followed his sister to a dingy s.p.a.ce in the rear which, primarily serving as a store-room, was also by virtue of a certain gloomy privacy, peculiarly adapted to the discussion of a subject of such delicacy.

Mrs. Gibson dusted a chair with needless ostentation and then focused her regard on her brother who stood before her a self-confessed culprit, conscious guilt as manifest in his att.i.tude as in the flaming confusion of his face.

"Thomas, what's this I hear about Persis Dale?"

"I don't know, Nellie. What have you heard?"

Mrs. Gibson's glance expressed her scorn of the evasion.

"Is it true that Justin Ware is going with her?"

"Why, I've heard, Nellie, that he's been over there once or twice. Old friend of Joel's," explained Thomas, with a futile effort to speak convincingly.

"Fiddlesticks! If I thought you really believed that any man would walk from the Clematis House out to the Dale place for the sake of hearing Joel Dale talk about the latest cure-all, I'd be ashamed to own you for my brother. If he goes, he goes to see Persis. Now, what do you mean to do about it?"

"Nellie, I haven't any right to interfere. If she wants Justin Ware's company it's her own business. She's not beholden to me."

"No," snapped Mrs. Gibson. "And why ain't she? Because you've been shilly-shallying along as though 'twas her business to pop the question. You men are getting nowadays so you can't do a thing for yourselves, you just hang back and leave us women to do it all."

Thomas squirmed like an impaled beetle. "Guess I'd better go back into the store, Nellie. George means well, but he hasn't much of a head-piece--"

"Thomas Hardin, you stay where you are till I'm done with you. Now tell me straight. Have you ever asked Persis Dale to marry you?"

"Well, Nellie, to be candid, I never have got really to the point. I want her to know the worst about me first. I wouldn't take her in for all the world, and then have her sorry afterward."

"Take her in! Of course, you'll take her in. If all men stopped for that, weddings would have gone out of fashion long ago. And it's well for women's peace of mind that they don't have to know the worst about the men they marry. I'm ashamed of you, Thomas! To think you've got no more gumption than to stand around like a ninny and let that city man walk off with the woman you've always wanted."

"If she'd rather marry Justin Ware," Thomas began and failed to finish his sentence, his voice strangled by his inward anguish. His sister snorted.

"Good lord! Thomas, a woman's going to marry the man that asks her.

By all accounts that Ware won't be mealy-mouthed. If he wants her, he'll not stand back and let another man have the first say."

There was a reasonableness in this presentation of the case which impressed Thomas as his air of irresolution showed.

"Then you think I've got a chance, Nellie?"

His sister groaned her exasperation. "You had all the chance till this Ware turned up. Of course when a woman's got a choice it makes a difference. But there's nothing gained by holding off and letting him have everything his own way. If you don't ask her, of course she'll take him, provided she gets the chance. And if you do ask her, she may take you. So you won't lose anything by trying."

As a result of this plain unflattering counsel, Thomas Hardin dressed that evening with unusual care, and with the approach of darkness turned his face toward his familiar goal, his emotions befitting a partic.i.p.ant in the charge of the Light Brigade. His throat was parched, his heart hammered. While absolutely certain that Persis was aware of his aspiration, the thought of expressing it, of making a formal offer, was distinctly terrifying. And moreover there was a disagreeable preliminary that must receive attention, the confession of another of those misdemeanors of his past, as irrepressible a brood as hounded poor Macbeth. The episode dated back to his twentieth year, when Annabel Sinclair was just waking up to the knowledge of her beauty and the power it gave her over the susceptible s.e.x. Thomas blushed to recall how ignominiously he himself had capitulated.

Fate was on his side that evening. Joel was absent. Persis was kind.

She sat by the lamp st.i.tching, and the inevitable suggestion of comfortable domesticity was in itself an inspiration. He thanked Heaven for her lowered gaze, confident that if he were forced to meet her candid eyes, he should never find courage to begin.

"Persis, there's something I want to tell you. It ain't pleasant to speak about it, but I think it's one of the things that ought to be said before--I mean I'd be a good deal easier in my mind if you knew all about it."

"I don't believe it's anything so very bad, Thomas," Persis said with unaccustomed gentleness.

"Well, I don't know. She was so pretty and cute that it sort of went to my head, but that's no excuse."

"Who was pretty?"

Persis let her work fall. Her eyes met her lover's with a challenge that did not tend to lessen Thomas's confusion.

"Well, Persis, you've a right to know. Of course I wouldn't mention it to anybody else. Not that she was a mite to blame," interpolated Thomas with instinctive chivalry, "for it was all my fault from start to finish. It--it was Stanley Sinclair's wife."

Absorbed as he was in relieving his conscience of its intolerable load, it did not occur to Thomas to emphasize the fact that on the occasion when he had played so culpable a part, Annabel still bore her maiden name. It was a good two years before the dignified Stanley Sinclair had recognized in the giddy, shallow, little beauty, the fitting mate for his staid maturity. And that his failure to make this point clear might lead to a serious misapprehension on Persis' part, failed to present itself as a possibility to the honest blunderer.

"Well?" Persis' tone was crisply interrogative. "What happened?"

"Why, she looked so like a kitten, Persis, that you can't hardly help petting, that I put my arm around her. And I--" He cleared his throat, his eyes, fortunately for his resolution, fixed upon the floor. "Well, I might as well make a clean breast of it. I did kiss her. Of course I ought to be ashamed--"

"Yes." Persis agreed icily. "You ought."

She had listened with a sort of sickened revolt to Thomas' stammered confession. Nothing that Annabel Sinclair could do would surprise her, nor did she wonder when boys of Thad West's age yielded to her lure.

But that this man, this staid, stanch Thomas, on whom she had counted more implicitly than she knew, should have proved so easy a victim shook her native faith in humankind. "All men are alike," thought Persis, in her haste betrayed into one of those sweepingly unjust generalizations such as King David penitently acknowledged.

Thomas' eyes came up from the carpet at her tone. He looked at her with a sort of terror. The fixed sternness of her face made her seem a stranger. Little as he had relished the idea of acknowledging his bygone weakness, he had not dreamed of a result like this.

For a moment he gazed at her with dumb appeal, then faltered: "I was--was afraid you'd be disgusted with me, Persis."

"I am."

He swallowed hard as if her answer were a mouthful that resisted mastication. For a little they sat silent. Persis picked up her work and resumed her sewing with a brave show of indifference though the seam ran into a blur before her eyes. And at last Thomas spoke.

"I'm sorry you take it this way, Persis, but it couldn't be helped. I had to clear up things before--I didn't feel it would be fair to ask you anything that would bind you till you knew the worst about me. And now--"

There was another long silence. Then Thomas found himself upon his feet, feeling for his hat, groping like a blind man.