ngenuously anxious to lay
Esther by the heels. Then he sobered, for her inhumanity to Esther
seemed to him incredible.

"Why, yes," said he, "if she had been suspected, if there'd been
evidence--"

"Then I call it a wicked shame she wasn't," said Lydia. "And she's got
to be now. If it isn't my business, it's Madame Beattie's, and I'll ask
her to do it. I'll beg it of her."

With that she seemed still more dangerous to him, like an explosive put
up in so seemly a package that at first you trust it until you see how
impossible it is to handle. He spoke with a real and also a calculated
impressiveness.

"Miss Lydia, will you let me tell you something?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed on his.

"One thing my profession has taught me. It's so absolutely true a thing
that it never fails. And it's this: it is very easy to begin a course of
proceeding, but, once begun, it's another thing to stop it. Now before
you start this ball rolling--or before you egg on Madame Beattie--let's
see what you're going to get out of it."

"I don't expect to get anything," said Lydia, on fire. "I'm not doing it
for myself."

"Let's take the other people then. Your father is a man of reputation.
He's going to be horrified. Jeff is going to be broken-hearted under an
attack upon his wife."

"He doesn't love her," said Lydia eagerly. "Not one bit."

Choate himself believed that, but he stared briefly at having it thrown
at him with so deft a touch. Then he went on.

"Mrs. Blake is going to be found not guilty."

"Why is she?" asked Lydia calmly. It seemed to her the cross-questioning
was rightly on her side.

"Why, good God! because she isn't guilty!" said Alston with violence,
and did not even remember to be glad no legal brother was present to
hear so irrational an explosion. He hurried on lest she should call
satiric attention to its thinness. "And as for Madame Beattie, she'll
get nothing out of it. For the necklace being lost, she won't get that."

"Oh," said Lydia, the more coolly, as she noted she had nettled him on
the human side until the legal one was fairly hidden, "but we don't
think the necklace is lost."

"Who don't?" he asked, frowning.

"Madame Beattie and I."

"Where do you think it is then?"

"We think Esther's got it somewhere."

"But you say she lost it."

"I say she said she lost it," returned Lydia, feeling the delight of
sounding more accurate every minute. "We don't think she did lose it. We
think she