my bag. You have planned it between you to get it
back into your hands."

Madame Beattie laughed pleasantly and went upstairs. And Esther crossed
the little hall and stood in the dining-room door looking at Alston
Choate. As she looked, her heart rose, for she saw conquest easy, in his
bowed head, his frowning glance. He had not wanted to stay, his attitude
told her; he was even yet raging against staying. But he could not leave
her. Passion in him was fighting side by side with feminine
implacability in her against the better part of him. She went forward
and stood before him droopingly, a most engaging picture of the purely
feminine. But he did not look at her, and she had to throw what argument
she might into her voice.

"You were so good to stay," she said, with a little tired sigh. "They've
gone. Come back into the other room."

He rose heavily and followed her, but in the library he did not sit
down. Esther sank into a low chair, leaned back in it and closed her
eyes. She really needed to give way a little. Her nerves were trembling
from the shock of more than one attack on them; fear, anger, these were
what her husband and Madame Beattie had roused in her. Jeffrey was
refusing to help her, and she hated him. But here was another man deftly
moved to her proximity by the ever careful hand of providence that had
made the creatures for her.

Alston stood by the mantel, leaning one elbow on it, with a strange
implication of wanting to put his head down and hide his face.

"Esther!" said he. There was no pretence now of being on terms too
distant to let him use her name.

She looked up at him, softly and appealingly, though he was not looking
at her. But Esther, if she had played Othello, would have blacked
herself all over. Alston began again in a voice of what sounded like an
extreme of irritation.

"For God's sake, tell me about this thing."

"You know all I do," she said brokenly.

"I don't know anything," said Choate. "You tell me your husband----"

"Don't call him that," she entreated.

"Your husband entered this house and took the necklace. I want to know
where he took it from."

"She told you," said Esther scornfully.

He gained a little courage now and ventured to look at her. If she could
repel Madame Beattie's insinuation, it must mean she had something on
her side. And when he looked he wondered, in a rush of pity, how he
could have felt anything for that crushed figure but ruth and love. S