Cherry, who was reading a letter, did not hear her.  Now she made some inarticulate sound that made Alix look at her in quick concern.

“Cherry, what is it?” she exclaimed.

For answer Cherry tossed her the letter, written on a thick sheet of lavender paper, which diffused a strong odour of scent.

“Read that!” she said, briefly.  And with a desperate air she dropped her head on the table, and knotted her hands high above it.

Fearfully, Alix picked up the perfumed sheet, and read, in a coarse and sprawling, yet unmistakably feminine handwriting, the following words: 

Dear Mrs. Lloyd:  Perhaps you would not feel so pleased with yourself if you knew the real reason why your husband left Red Creek?  It was because of a quarrel he had with Hatty Woods.

If you don’t believe it you had better ask him about some of the parties he had with Joe King’s crowd, and where they were on the night of August 28th, and if he knows anybody named Hatty Woods, and see what he says.  Ask him if he ever heard of Bopps’ Hotel and when he was in Sacramento last.  If he denies it, you can show him this letter.

There was no signature.

Alix, who had read it first with a bewildered and suspicious look, read it again, and flushed deeply at the sordid shame of it.  She laid it down, and looked in stunned conviction at her sister.

Cherry, who was breathing hard, raised her head, rested her chin on her hands, elbows on the table, and stared at Alix defiantly.

“There!” she said, almost with triumph.  “There!  Now, is that so easy?  Now, am I to just smile and agree and say ’Certainly, Martin,’ ‘Of course, Martin dear!’ Now you see—­now you see!  Now, am I to bear that,” she rushed on, her words suddenly violent.  “And go on with him—­as his wife—­when a common woman like that—­”

“Cherry, dear!” Alix said, distressedly.

“Ah, well, you can’t realize it; nobody but the woman to whom it happens can!” Cherry interrupted her, covering her face with her hands.  “But let him say what he pleases now,” she added, passionately, “let him do what he pleases—­I’ll follow my own course from to-day on!”

Alix, watching her fearfully, was amazed at the change in her.  Cherry’s eyes were blazing, her cheeks pale.  Her voice was dry and feverish, and there was a sort of frenzy in her manner that Alix had never seen before.  To bring sunny little Cherry to this—­to change the radiant, innocent child that had been Cherry into this bitter and disillusioned woman—­Alix felt as if the whole world were going mad, and as if life would never be sane and serene again for any one of them.

“Cherry, do you believe it?” she asked.

Cherry, roused from a moment of brooding silence, shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

“Oh, of course I believe it!” she answered.

“But, darling, we don’t even know who wrote it.  We have only this woman’s word for it—­”