ay.

"It's only," she said, "we're not getting anywhere. That worries me."

"With your work?" Miss Amabel was waving a palm-leaf fan, from no
necessity but the tranquillity induced by its rhythmic sway.

"Oh, no. About Jeffrey. Didn't you know we meant to clear him, Anne and
I?"

"Clear him, dear? What of?"

"Why, what he was accused of," said Lydia.

"But he had his trial, you know. He was found guilty. He pleaded guilty,
dear. That was why he was sentenced."

"Oh, but we all know why he pleaded guilty," said Lydia. "It was to save
somebody else."

"Not exactly to save her," said Miss Amabel. "She wouldn't have been
tried, you know. She wasn't guilty in that sense. Of course she was,
before the fact. But that's not being legally guilty. It's only morally
so."

Lydia was staring at her with wide eyes.

"Do you mean Esther?" she asked.

"Why, yes, of course I mean Esther."

"But I don't. I mean that dreadful man."

She put her feet to the floor and sat upright, smoothing her hair with
hurried fingers. At least if she could talk about it with some one who
wasn't Anne with whom she had talked for years knowing exactly what Anne
would say at every point, it seemed as if she were getting, even at a
snail's pace, upon her road. But Miss Amabel was very dense.

"My dear," said she, "I don't know what you mean."

"I mean the man that was in the scheme with him, in a way, and got out
and sold his shares while they were up, and let the crash come on
Jeffrey when he was alone."

"James Reardon?"

Lydia hated him too much to accept even a knowledge of his name.

"He was a promoter, just as Jeffrey was," she insisted, with her pretty
sulkiness. "He was the one that went West and looked after the mines.
And if there was nothing in them, he knew it. But he let Jeffrey go on
trying to--to place the shares--and when Jeffrey went under he was
safely out of the way. And he's guilty."

Miss Amabel looked at her thoughtfully and patiently.

"I'm afraid he isn't guilty in any sense the law would recognise," she
said. "You see, dear, there are things the law doesn't take into
account. It can't. You believe in Jeffrey. So do I. But I think you'll
have to realise Jeffrey lost his head. And he did do wrong."

"Oh, how can you say a thing like that?" cried Lydia, in high passion.
"And you've known him all your life."

Miss Amabel was not astute. Her nobility made it a condition of her mind
to be unsuspecting. She knew