Necklace found in Mrs. Jeffrey Blake's hand-bag?"

Jeff was looking at her sharply.

"I never said I took it from a hand-bag," he rejoined.

Madame Beattie broke down and laughed. She gave the bracelet a final snap.

"You're quite a clever boy," said she. "Alston Choate wouldn't have seen that if he'd hammered at it a week. Yes, it was in Esther's bag. I don't care much how it got out. The question is, how did it get in? How are you going to shield Esther?"

He was aware that Esther was looking at him in a breathless waiting. The hatred, he knew, must have gone out of her face. She was the abject human animal beseeching mercy from the stronger. That she could ask him whom she had repudiated to stand by her in her distress, hurt him like a personal degradation. But he was sorry for her, and he would fight. He answered roughly, at a venture, and he felt her start. Yet the roughness was not for her.

"No. I shall do nothing whatever," he said, and heard her little cry and Madame Beattie's a.s.sured tone following it, with an uncertainty whether he had done well.

"You're quite decided?" Madame Beattie was giving him one more chance.

"You're going to let Esther serve her time in the dirty little man's paper? It'll be something more than publicity here. My word! Her name will fly over the globe."

He heard Esther's quick breathing nearer and nearer, and then he felt her hand on his arm. She had crept closer, involuntarily, he could believe, but drawn by the instinct to be saved. He felt his own heart beating thickly, with sorrow for her, an agonising ruth that she should have to sue to him. But he spoke sharply, not looking at her, his eyes on Madame Beattie's.

"I shall not a.s.sume the slightest responsibility in the matter. I have told you I took the necklace. You can say that in Weedon Moore's paper till you are both of you--" he paused.

The hand was resting on his arm, and Esther's breathing presence choked him with a sense of the strangeness of things and the poignant suffering in mere life.

"I sha'n't mention you," said Madame Beattie. "I know who took the necklace."

"What?"

His movement must have shaken the touch on his arm, for Esther's hand fell.

"You don't suppose I'm a fool, do you?" inquired Madame Beattie. "I knew it was going to happen. I saw the whole thing."

"Then," said Esther, slipping away from him a pace, "you didn't do it after all."

If he had not been so shaken by Madame Beattie's words he could have laughed with the grim humour of it. Esther was sorry he had not done it.

"So," said Madame Beattie, "you'd better think twice about it. I'll give you time. But I shall a.s.suredly publish the name of the person who took the necklace out of Esther's bag, as well as the fact that it had to be in Esther's bag or it couldn't have been taken out. Two thieves, Jeff.

You'd better think twice."

"Yes," said Jeff. "I will think. Is it understood?" He walked over to her and stood there looking down at her.

She glanced pleasantly up at him.

"Of course, my dear boy," she said. "I shouldn't dream of saying a word--till you've thought twice. But you must think quick, Jeff. I can't wait forever."

"I swear," said Jeff, "you are--" Neither words nor breath failed him, but he was afraid of his own pa.s.sion.

Madame Beattie laughed.

"Jeff," said she, "I've no visible means of support. If I had I should be as mild--you can't think!"

He turned and, without a look at Esther, strode out of the room. Esther hardly waited for the door to close behind him before she fell upon Madame Beattie.

"Who did it?" she cried. "That woman?"

Madame Beattie was exploring a little box for a tablet, which she took composedly.

"What woman?" she asked.

"That woman upstairs."

"Rhoda Knox? G.o.d bless me, no! Rhoda Knox wouldn't steal a b.u.t.ton. She's New England to the bone."

"Sophy?"

"Esther, you're a fool. Why don't you let me manage Jeff in my own way?

You won't manage him yourself." She got up with a clashing of little chains and yawned broadly. "Don't forget Alston Choate sitting in the dining-room waiting like a messenger boy."

"In the dining-room?"

"Yes. Did you think he'd go? He's waiting there to hear Jeff a.s.sault you, and come to the rescue. You told him you were afraid." She was on her way to the door, but she turned. "I may as well take this," she said idly, and swept the necklace into her hand. She held it up and shook it in the light, and Esther's eyes, as she knew they would, dwelt on it with a hungry pa.s.sion.

"You are taking it away," said Esther. "You've no right to. He said he had paid you money on it when it was lost. If he did, it belongs to him.

And I'm his wife."

"I might as well take it with me," said Madame Beattie. "You don't act as if you were his wife."

A quick madness shot into Esther's brain and overwhelmed it, anger, or fright, she could not tell what. She did not cry out because she knew Alston Choate was in the next room, but she spoke sobbingly:

"He did take it out of my bag. You have planned it between you to get it back into your hands."

Madame Beattie laughed pleasantly and went upstairs. And Esther crossed the little hall and stood in the dining-room door looking at Alston Choate. As she looked, her heart rose, for she saw conquest easy, in his bowed head, his frowning glance. He had not wanted to stay, his att.i.tude told her; he was even yet raging against staying. But he could not leave her. Pa.s.sion in him was fighting side by side with feminine implacability in her against the better part of him. She went forward and stood before him droopingly, a most engaging picture of the purely feminine. But he did not look at her, and she had to throw what argument she might into her voice.

"You were so good to stay," she said, with a little tired sigh. "They've gone. Come back into the other room."

He rose heavily and followed her, but in the library he did not sit down. Esther sank into a low chair, leaned back in it and closed her eyes. She really needed to give way a little. Her nerves were trembling from the shock of more than one attack on them; fear, anger, these were what her husband and Madame Beattie had roused in her. Jeffrey was refusing to help her, and she hated him. But here was another man deftly moved to her proximity by the ever careful hand of providence that had made the creatures for her.

Alston stood by the mantel, leaning one elbow on it, with a strange implication of wanting to put his head down and hide his face.

"Esther!" said he. There was no pretence now of being on terms too distant to let him use her name.

She looked up at him, softly and appealingly, though he was not looking at her. But Esther, if she had played Oth.e.l.lo, would have blacked herself all over. Alston began again in a voice of what sounded like an extreme of irritation.

"For G.o.d's sake, tell me about this thing."

"You know all I do," she said brokenly.

"I don't know anything," said Choate. "You tell me your husband----"

"Don't call him that," she entreated.