A certain Royal Personage," said Madame Beattie calmly.

"Or," said Alston, beginning after a safe hiatus, "whether you had had
an imitation made, and whether the necklace said to be lost was the
imitation."

"Well, then I'll tell you plainly," said Madame Beattie, in a cheerful
concession, "I didn't have an imitation made. And you're quite within
the truth with your silly 'said to be's.' For it was said to be lost.
Esther said it. And she no more lost it than she went to New York that
time to climb the Matterhorn. Do you know Esther?"

"Yes," said Alston with a calculated dignity, "I know her very well."

"Oh, I mean really know her, not enough to take her in to dinner or
snatch your hat off to her."

"Yes, I really know her."

"Then why should you assume she's not a liar?" Madame Beattie asked this
with the utmost tranquillity. It almost robbed the insult of offence.
But Alston's face arrested her, and she burst out laughing. "My dear
boy," said she, "you deal with evidence and you don't know a liar when
you see her. Esther isn't all kinds of a liar. She isn't an amusing one,
for instance. She hasn't any imagination. Now if I thought it would make
you jump, I should tell you there was a tiger sitting on the top of that
bookcase. I should do it because it would amuse me. But Esther never'd
think of such a thing." She was talking to him now with perfect
good-humour because he actually had glanced up at the bookcase, and it
was tribute to her dramatic art. "She tells only the lies she has to.
Esther's the perfect female animal hiding under things when there's
something she's afraid of in the open and then telling herself she hid
because she felt like being alone. The little imp wouldn't do that,"
said Madame Beattie admiringly. "She wouldn't be afraid of anything, or
if she was she'd fight the harder. I shouldn't want to see the blood
she'd draw."

Alston was looking at her in a fixed distaste.

"Esther is your niece," he began.

"Grandniece," interrupted Madame Beattie.

"She's of your blood. And at present you are her guest--"

"Oh, no, I'm not. The house is Susan's. Susan and I are step-sisters.
Half the house ought to have been left to me, only Grandfather Pike knew
I was worshipped, simply worshipped in Paris, and he wrote me something
scriptural about Babylon."

"At any rate," said Alston, "you are technically visiting your niece,
and you come here and tell me she is a thief and a liar."

"You sent