A WICKED WOMAN

It was because she had broken with Billy that Loretta had come visiting
to Santa Clara. Billy could not understand. His sister had reported that
he had walked the floor and cried all night. Loretta had not slept all
night either, while she had wept most of the night. Daisy knew this,
because it was in her arms that the weeping had been done. And Daisy's
husband, Captain Kitt, knew, too. The tears of Loretta, and the
comforting by Daisy, had lost him some sleep.

Now Captain Kitt did not like to lose sleep. Neither did he want Loretta
to marry Billy--nor anybody else. It was Captain Kitt's belief that
Daisy needed the help of her younger sister in the household. But he
did not say this aloud. Instead, he always insisted that Loretta was too
young to think of marriage. So it was Captain Kitt's idea that Loretta
should be packed off on a visit to Mrs. Hemingway. There wouldn't be any
Billy there.

Before Loretta had been at Santa Clara a week, she was convinced that
Captain Kitt's idea was a good one. In the first place, though Billy
wouldn't believe it, she did not want to marry Billy. And in the second
place, though Captain Kitt wouldn't believe it, she did not want to
leave Daisy. By the time Loretta had been at Santa Clara two weeks, she
was absolutely certain that she did not want to marry Billy. But she was
not so sure about not wanting to leave Daisy. Not that she loved Daisy
less, but that she--had doubts.

The day of Loretta's arrival, a nebulous plan began shaping itself in
Mrs. Hemingway's brain. The second day she remarked to Jack Hemingway,
her husband, that Loretta was so innocent a young thing that were it not
for her sweet guilelessness she would be positively stupid. In proof
of which, Mrs. Hemingway told her husband several things that made him
chuckle. By the third day Mrs. Hemingway's plan had taken recognizable
form. Then it was that she composed a letter. On the envelope she wrote:
"Mr. Edward Bashford, Athenian Club, San Francisco."

"Dear Ned," the letter began. She had once been violently loved by him
for three weeks in her pre-marital days. But she had covenanted herself
to Jack Hemingway, who had prior claims, and her heart as well; and Ned
Bashford had philosophically not broken his heart over it. He merely
added the experience to a large fund of similarly collected data out of
which he manufactured philosophy. Artistically and temperamentally he
was a Greek--a tired Gre