el, I suppose," said Mrs. Hornblower. "She'll
have to, for there's nobody in Boston she knows well enough to visit.
A single woman staying alone at a hotel sounds dreadful improper to me.
Robert would never allow me to do such a thing, never for a minute.
And nobody even knows what she's gone for."

But Annabel Sinclair thought she knew. "I shouldn't wonder," she told
Diantha, "if when Persis Dale gets back we'd see startling changes."

Her confidential tone was balm to Diantha's spirit. For since the
daughter's sudden leap into maturity, the relations between the two had
been strained, the instinct of sex rivalry overmastering such shadowy
maternal impulses as had outlived Diantha's babyhood. The girl
responded eagerly to the advance.

"Yes, I shouldn't wonder if she'd have lots of new clothes."

"She'll need more than clothes to make her presentable, and she knows
it, too." Annabel's voice was rasping. "They have beauty-shops in the
cities, you know, where they fix over old women who want to look young,
skin off the wrinkles and all sorts of things." She flashed a glance
at the mirror--there was always a mirror convenient in the Sinclair
establishment--and smiled with malicious enjoyment. Annabel did not
need skinning.

Diantha edged away with sudden distaste. "I don't think Miss Persis
would do anything like that, mama."

"Why not?" Her mother spoke fiercely. "It's the sensible thing to do
when you need it. After her good looks are gone, there's nothing left
for a woman." The bitterness of a participant in a losing fight flung
a black shadow across her fairness. For defy Time as she would, the
day must come when he would triumph. She looked again at herself in
the mirror as if already he had stolen the bloom from her cheek and the
gold from her hair and shuddered at the thought of what must be.

Persis had said to her brother that she might be away a week. On the
sixth day came a brief note to the effect that her business was not
quite finished and that she would let him know when to expect her.
Another week went by, and one afternoon Joel received his first
telegram.

He stood staring at the sinister brown envelope with its black
lettering, and a chilly fear clutched his heart. One catastrophe after
another suggested itself, each to be discarded in favor of another more
appalling. Persis had lost her money. She had met with an accident.
She was dead. His bony hand shook till the envelope