rt once more. If he talked
reasonably with her, perhaps she could persuade him after all. "Why,
don't you see? it's just as easy! I do, and I've only thought of it one
night. Don't you see, Madame Beattie's here to hound Jeffrey into
paying her for the necklace. That's going to kill him, just kill him.
Anne, I should think you could see that."

Anne could see it if it were so. But Lydia, she thought, was building on
a dream. The hideous old woman with the ostrich feathers had played a
satiric joke on her, and here was Lydia in good faith assuming the joke
was real.

"And if we can get this cleared up," said Lydia calmly, feeling very
mature as she scanned their troubled faces, "Madame Beattie can just
have her necklace back, and Jeff, instead of thinking he's got to start
out with that tied round his neck, can set to work and pay his
creditors."

Alston Choate was looking at her, frowning.

"Do you realise, Miss Lydia, what amount it is Jeffrey would have to pay
his creditors? Unless he went into the market again and had a run of
unbroken luck--and he's no capital to begin on--it's a thing he simply
couldn't do. And as to the market, God forbid that he should ever think
of it."

"Yes," said Anne fervently, "God forbid that. Farvie can't say enough
against it."

Lydia's perfectly concrete faith was not impaired in the least.

"It isn't to be expected he should pay it all," said she. "He's got to
pay what he can. If he should die to-morrow with ten dollars saved
toward paying back his debts--"

"Do you happen to know what sum of money represents his debts?" Alston
threw in, as you would clutch at the bit of a runaway horse.

"I know all about it," said Lydia. She suddenly looked hot and fierce.
"I've done sums with it over and over, to see if he could afford to pay
the interest too. And it's so much it doesn't mean anything at all to me
one minute, and another time I wake up at night and feel it sitting on
me, jamming me flat. But you needn't think I'm going to stop for that.
And if you won't be my lawyer I can find somebody that will. That Mr.
Moore is a lawyer. I'll go to him."

Anne, who had been staring at Lydia with the air of never having truly
seen her, turned upon Choate, her beautiful eyes distended in a tragical
appeal.

"Oh," said she, "you'll have to help us somehow."

So Alston Choate thought. He was regarding Lydia, and he spoke with a
deference she was glad to welcome, a prospective client's