deft motion, set the fruit on a little table and ran a hand lightly
over her soft disorder of hair.

"Do excuse me," said she. "I didn't hear you."

"My name is French," said Lydia, in an incisive haste, "Lydia French. I
came to talk with you about Jeff."

The shadow that went over Esther's face was momentary, no more than a
bird's wing over a flowery plot; but it was a shadow only. There was no
eagerness or uplift or even trouble at the name of Jeff.

"Father came this afternoon," said Lydia. "He wanted to talk things
over. He couldn't get in."

"Oh," said Esther, "I'm sorry for that. So you are one of the
step-children. Sit down, won't you. Oh, do take this chair."

Lydia was only too glad to take any chair and get the strain off her
trembling knees. It was no trivial task, she saw, to face Jeff's wife
and drag her back to wifehood. But she ignored the proffer of the softer
chair. It was easier to take a straight one and sit upright, her brown
little hands clenched tremblingly. Esther, too, took a chair the twin of
hers, as if to accept no advantage; she sat with dignity and waited
gravely. She seemed to be watchful, intent, yet bounded by reserves. It
was the attitude of waiting for attack.

"This very next week, you know, Jeff will be discharged." Lydia spoke
with the brutality born of her desperation. Still Esther watched her.
"You know, don't you?" Lydia hurled at her. She had a momentary thought,
"The woman is a fool." "From jail," she continued. "From the Federal
Prison. You know, don't you? You heard he had been pardoned?"

Esther looked at her a full minute, her face slowly suffusing. Lydia saw
the colour even flooding into her neck. Her eyes did not fill, but they
deepened in some unusual way. They seemed to be saying, defiantly
perhaps, that they could cry if they would, but they had other modes of
empery.

"You know, don't you?" Lydia repeated, but more gently. She began to
wonder now whether trouble had weakened the wife's brain, her power at
least of receptivity.

"Yes," said Esther. "I know it, of course. To-day's paper had quite a
long synopsis of the case."

Now Lydia flushed and looked defiant.

"I am glad to know that," she said. "I must burn the paper. Farvie
sha'n't see it."

"There were two reporters here yesterday," said Esther. She spoke
angrily now. Her voice hinted that this was an indignity which need not
have been put upon her.

"Did you see them?" asked Lydia, in a flash,