g the rest of her lecture aside for future use,
said: "Well, if it's all settled, then I've no more to say. Probably I'm
too fussy about what the town thinks, anyway."

"Precisely my contention, Mrs. Congdon," replied her husband.

She was audaciously frank and truth-seeking, but she could not say to
any one but her husband that Little Mrs. Haney, expanding into a
dangerously attractive woman, was already in love with Ben Fordyce.
"There are limits to advice, after all," she said to Frank, when they
were alone.

"I'm glad you recognize the limit in this case," he replied, "but I
don't intend to worry. Ben is all right, and the girl has got to have
her tragedy sooner or later. If it isn't Ben, it will be somebody else.
A wonder it wasn't with me."

"Oh, I don't know." She laughed. "I feel very secure about you."

"Am I such a bad shape?" he asked, with comical inflection.

CHAPTER XIII

BERTHA'S YELLOW CART

Ben found his office a most cheerful and pleasant resort--just what he
needed. And each morning as soon as his breakfast was eaten, he went to
his desk to write, to read his morning paper, and to glance at the law
journals. He called this "studying." About eleven o'clock the Haneys
regularly drove down, and they went over some paper, or some proposal
for investment, or Williams came in with a report of the mines. This
filled in the time till lunch. Not infrequently he got into the
carriage, and they rode up to get Alice to fill out the table. In the
afternoon they sometimes went out to the mesas, and it was this almost
daily habit of driving and lunching with the Haneys which infuriated
Mrs. Crego (who really loved Alice) and troubled Lee Congdon (who was,
as she said, frankly in love with Ben). Gossips were already discussing
the outcome of it all.

"Just such a situation as that has produced a murderess," said Mrs.
Crego to the judge one night. But he only shook his paper and scowled
under its cover, refusing to say one word further concerning the Haneys.

Alice, studying Ben with those uncanny eyes of hers, saw him slowly
yielding to the charm of Bertha's personality, which was maturing
rapidly under the influence of her love. She was as silent as ever, but
her manner was less boyish. The swell of her bosom, the glow that came
into her face, had their counterparts in the unconsciously acquired
feminine grace of her bearing. She was giving up many of the phrases
which jarred on polite ears, and