here to Esther. She
was the only relation I had, except my stepsister, and she was off
travelling. Susan was always ashamed of me. She went to Europe on
purpose. Well, I came here. And Esther wished I was at the bottom of the
sea. But she liked my necklace, and she stole it."

Esther, as Lydia had seen her sitting in a long chair and eating candied
fruit, had been a figure of such civilised worth, however odious, that
Lydia said involuntarily, in a loud voice:

"She couldn't. I don't believe it."

"Oh, but she did," said Madame Beattie, looking at her with the coolness
of one who holds the cards. "She owned she did."

"To you?"

"To Jeff. He was madly in love with her then. Married, you understand,
but frightfully in love. Yes, she owned it. I always thought that was
why he wasn't sorry to go to jail. If he'd stayed out there was the
question of the necklace. And Esther. He didn't know what to do with
her."

"But he made her give it back," said Lydia, out of agonised certainty
that she must above all believe in him.

"He couldn't. She said she'd lost it."

Lydia stared at her, and her own face went white. Now the picture of
youth and age confronting each other was of the sybil dealing inexorable
hurts and youth anguished in the face of them.

"She said she'd lost it," Madame Beattie went on, in almost chuckling
enjoyment of her tale. "She said it had bewitched her. That was true
enough. She'd gone to New York. She came back by boat. Crazy thing for a
woman to do. And she said she stayed on deck late, and stood by the rail
and took the necklace out of her bag to hold it up in the moonlight. And
it slipped out of her hands."

"Into the water?"

"She said so."

"You don't believe it." Lydia read that clearly in the contemptuous old
face.

"Well, now, I ask you," said Madame Beattie, "was there ever such a
silly tale? A young woman of New England traditions--yes, they're
ridiculous, but you've got to reckon with them--she comes home on a Fall
River boat and doesn't even stay in her cabin, but hangs round on decks
and plays with priceless diamonds in the moonlight. Why, it's enough to
make the cat laugh."

Madame Beattie, in spite of her cosmopolitan reign, was at least local
enough to remember the feline similes Lydia put such dependence on, and
she used this one with relish. Lydia felt the more at home.

"But what did she do with it?" she insisted.

"I don't know," said Madame Beattie idly. "Put it in