Part 56 (1/2)

”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. So when he spoke again his voice was gentler, and Esther's courage leaped to meet it.

”I am told the necklace was in your bag. How did it get there?”

”I don't know,” said Esther, in a perfect clarity.

His new formed hope crumbled. He could hear inexorably, like a counter cry, Lydia's voice, saying, ”She stole it.” Had Esther stolen it? But Esther did not know Lydia had said it, or that it had ever been said to him at all, and she was daring more than she would have dared if she had known of that antagonist.

”It is a plot between them,” she said boldly.

”Between whom?”

”Aunt Patricia and him.”

”What is the plot?”

”I don't know.”

”If you think there was a plot, you must have made up your mind what the plot was and what they were to gain by it. What do you believe the plot to have been?”

This was all very stupid, Esther felt, when he might be a.s.suring her of his unchanged and practical devotion.

”Oh, I don't know,” she said irritably. ”How should I know?”

”You wouldn't think there was a plot without having some idea of what it was,” he was insisting, in what she thought his stupid way. ”What is your idea it was?”

This was really, she saw, the same question over again, which was another instance of his heavy literalness. She had to answer, she knew now, unless she was to dismiss him, disaffected.

”She put the necklace in my bag,” she ventured, with uncertainty as to the value of the statement and yet no diminution of boldness in making it.

”What for?”

”To have him steal it, I suppose.”

”To have him steal her own necklace? Couldn't she have given it to him?”

”Oh, I don't know,” said Esther. ”She is half crazy. Don't you see she is? She might have had a hundred reasons. She might have thought if he tried to steal it he'd get caught, and she could blackmail him.”

”But how was he to know she had put it in the bag?”

”I don't know.” Esther was settling into the stolidity of the obstinate when they are crowded too far; yet she still remembered she must not cease to be engaging.

”Why was it better to have him find it in your bag than anywhere else in the house?” he was hammering on.

”I don't know,” said Esther again, and now she gave a little sigh.

That, she thought, should have recalled him to his male responsibility not to trap and torture. But she had begun to wonder how she could escape when the door opened and Jeff came in. Alston turned to meet him, and, with Esther, was amazed at his altered look. Jeff was like a man who had had a rage and got over it, who had even heard good news, or had in some way been recalled. And he had. On the way home, when he had nearly reached there, in haste to find Lydia and tell her the necklace was back in Madame Beattie's hands, he had suddenly remembered that he was a prisoner and that all men were prisoners until they knew they were, and it became at once imperative to get back to Esther and see if he could let her out. And the effect of this was to make his face to s.h.i.+ne as that of one who was already released from bondage. To Esther he looked young, like the Jeff she used to know.

”Don't go, Choate,” he said, when Alston picked himself up from the mantel and straightened, as if his next move might be to walk away. ”I wanted to see Esther, but I'd rather see you both. I've been thinking about this infernal necklace, and I realise it's of no value at all.”