crying. But now she drew
herself up and looked, not at him, but at Madame Beattie.

"How dare you?" she said, in a low tone, not convincingly to the ears of
those who had heard it said better on the stage, yet with a reproving
passion adequate to the case.

But Alston asked no further questions. Madame Beattie went amicably on.

"Mr. Choate, this matter of the necklace is a family affair. Why don't
you run away and let Jeffrey and his wife--and me, you know--let us
settle it?"

Alston, dismissed, forgot he had been summoned and that Esther might be
still depending on him. He turned about to the door, but she recalled
him.

"Don't go," she said. The words were all in one breath. "Don't go far. I
am afraid."

He hesitated, and Jeffrey said equably but still with a grim amusement:

"I think you'd better go."

So he went out of the room and Esther was left between her two
inquisitors.

XXIX

That she did look upon Jeff as her tormentor he could see. She took a
darting step to the door, but he was closing it.

"Wait a minute," he said. "There are one or two things we've got to get
at. Where did you find the necklace?"

She met his look immovably, in the softest obstinacy. It smote him like
a blow. There was something implacable in it, too, an aversion almost as
fierce as hate.

"This is the necklace," he went on. "It was lost, you know. Where did
you find it, Esther?"

But suddenly Esther remembered she had a counter charge to make.

"You have broken into this house," she said, "and taken it. If it is
Aunt Patricia's, you have taken it from her."

"No," said Aunt Patricia easily, "it isn't altogether mine. Jeff made me
a payment on it a good many years ago."

Esther turned upon her.

"He paid you for it? When?"

"He paid me something," said Madame Beattie. "Not the value of the
necklace. That was when you stole it, Esther. He meant to pay me the
full value. He will, in time. But he paid me what he could to keep you
from being found out. Hush money, Esther."

Queer things were going on in Jeff's mind. The necklace, no matter what
its market price, seemed to him of no value whatever in itself. There
it lay, a glittering gaud; but he had seen a piece of glass that threw
out colours as divinely. Certainly the dew was brighter. But as
evidence, it was very important indeed. The world was a place, he
realised, where we play with counters such as this. They enable us to
speak a language. When Es