specious
calm, had admitted him. She did not question him nor did Jeffrey even
ask for Esther. With the opening of the door he heard voices, and now
the sound of an angry crying, and Sophy herself had the air of an
unwilling servitor at a strange occasion. Jeffrey, standing in the
doorway of the library, faced the group there. Esther was seated on a
low chair, her face crumpled and red, as if she had just wiped it free
of tears. The handkerchief, clutched into a ball in her angry fist, gave
further evidence. Madame Beattie, enormously amused, sat in the handsome
straight-backed chair that became her most, and unaffectedly and broadly
smiled. And Alston Choate, rather pale in a sternness of judicial
consideration, stood, hands in his pockets, and regarded them. At
Jeffrey's entrance they looked up at him and Esther instantly sprang to
her feet and retreated to a position at the right of Choate, where he
might be conceived of as standing in the position of tacitly protecting
her. Jeff, the little parcel in his hand, advanced upon them.

"Here is the necklace," said he, in a perfectly commonplace tone. "I
suppose that's what you are talking about."

Esther's eyes, by the burning force he felt in them, seemed to draw his,
and he looked at her, as if to inquire what was to be done with it now
it was here. Esther did not wait for any one to put that question. She
spoke sharply, as if the words leaped to utterance.

"The necklace was stolen. It was taken out of this house. Who took it?"

Jeffrey had not for a moment wondered whether he might be asked. But now
he saw Lydia as he had left her, in her childish misery, and answered
instantly: "I took it."

Alston Choate gave a little exclamation, of amazement, of disgust. Then
he drew the matter into his own judicial hands. "Where did you take it
from?" he asked.

Jeffrey looked at him in a grave consideration. Alston Choate seemed to
him a negligible quantity; so did Esther and so did Madame Beattie. All
he wanted was to clear the slender shoulders of poor savage, wretched
Lydia at home.

"Do you mind telling me, Jeffrey?" Alston was asking, in quite a human
way considering that he embodied the majesty of the law. "You couldn't
have walked into this house and taken a thing which didn't belong to you
and carried it away."

His tone was rather a chaffing one, a recall to the intercourse of
everyday life. "Be advised," it said. "Don't carry a dull joke too far."

"Certain