n justice to her, let such a thing get into
print."

Weedon was much impressed, by her beauty, her accessibility and his own
incredible position of having something to accord. But he had a system
of mental bookkeeping. There were persons who asked favours of him, whom
he put down as debtors. "Make 'em pay," was his mentally jotted note. If
he did them an obliging turn, he kept his memory alert to require the
equivalent at some other time. But he did not see how to make Esther
pay. So he could only temporise.

"I'd give anything to oblige you, Mrs. Blake," he said, "anything, I
assure you. But I have to consider the paper. I'm not alone there, you
know. It's a question of other people."

Esther was familiar with that form of withdrawal. She herself was always
escaping by it.

"But you own the paper," she combated him. "Everybody says so."

"I have met with a great deal of misrepresentation," he replied
solemnly. "Justice is no more alive to-day than liberty." Then he
remembered this was a sentence he intended to use in his speech to-night
on the old circus-ground, and added, as more apposite, "I'd give
anything to serve you, Mrs. Blake, I assure you I would. But I owe a
certain allegiance--a certain allegiance--I do, really."

With that he made his exit, backing out and bowing ridiculously over his
hat. And Esther had hardly time to weigh her defeat, for callers came.
They began early and continued through the afternoon, and they all
asked for Madame Beattie. It was a hot day and Madame Beattie, without
her toupee and with iced _eau sucree_ beside her, was absorbedly
reading. She looked up briefly, when Sophy conveyed to her the summons
to meet lingering ladies below, and only bade her: "Excuse me to them.
Say I'm very much engaged."

Then she went on reading. Esther, when the message was suavely but
rather maliciously delivered by Sophy, who had a proper animosity for
her social betters, hardly knew whether it was easier to meet the
invaders alone or run the risk of further disclosure if Madame Beattie
appeared. For though no word was spoken of diamonds or interviews or
newspapers, she could follow, with a hot sensitiveness, the curiosity
flaring all over the room, like a sky licked by harmless lightnings.
When a lady equipped in all the panoply of feminine convention asked for
grandmother's health, she knew the thought underneath, decently
suppressed, was an interest, no less eager for being unspoken, in
grand