om her chatelaine. Evidently the
desire to hold her niece in her arms had been for telegraphic purposes
only.

When they had gone in and Aunt Patricia was removing her gloves and
accepting tea--she said she would not take her hat off until she went
upstairs--she asked, with a cheerful boldness:

"Where's your husband?"

Esther shrank perceptibly. No one but Lydia had felt at liberty to pelt
her with the incarcerated husband, and she was not only sensitive in
fact but from an intuition of the prettiest thing to do.

"Oh, I knew he was out," said Madame Beattie. "I keep track of your
American papers. Isn't he here?"

"He's in town," said Esther, in a low voice. Her cheeks burned with
hatred of the insolence of kin which could force you into the open and
strip you naked.

"Where?"

"With his father."

"Does his father live alone?"

"No. He has step-daughters."

"Children of that woman that married him out of hand when he was over
sixty? Ridiculous business! Well, what's Jeff there for? Why isn't he
with you?"

Madame Beattie had a direct habit of address, and, although she spoke
many other languages fluently, in the best of English. There were times
when she used English with an extreme of her lisping accent, but that
was when it seemed good business so to do. This she modified if she
found herself cruising where New England standards called for plain New
England speech.

"Why isn't he with you?" she asked again.

The tea had come and Madame Beattie lifted her cup in a manner elegantly
calculated to display, though ingenuously, a hand loaded with rings.

"Dear auntie," said Esther, widening eyes that had been potent with
Alston Choate but would do slight execution among a feminine contingent,
"Jeffrey wouldn't be happy with me."

"Nonsense," said Aunt Patricia, herself taking the teapot and
strengthening her cup. "What do you mean by happy?"

"He is completely estranged," said Esther. "He is a different man from
what he used to be."

"Of course he's different. You're different. So am I. He can't take up
things where he left them, but he's got to take them up somewhere.
What's he going to do?"

"I don't know," said Esther. She drank her tea nervously. It seemed to
her she needed a vivifying draught. "Auntie, you don't quite understand.
We are divorced in every sense."

That sounded complete, and she hoped for some slight change of position
on the part of the inquisitor.

"Of course you went to s