the necklace hasn't been fully paid for. I've kept my word to
him. I haven't exposed his wife, and yet he hasn't recognised my not
doing it."

The vision of Jeffrey fleeing before the lash of this implacable
taskmaster was appalling to Lydia.

"But he can't pay you," said she. "He's no money. Not even to settle
with his creditors."

"That's it," said Madame Beattie. "He's got to make it. And I'm his
first creditor. I must be paid first."

"You haven't told him so?" said Lydia, in a manner of fending her off.

"It isn't time. He hasn't recovered his nerve. But he will, digging in
that absurd garden."

"And when you think he has, you'll tell him?"

"Why, of course." Madame Beattie reached for her book and smoothed the
pages open with a beautiful hand. "It'll do him good, too. Bring him out
of thinking he's a man of destiny, or whatever it is he thinks. You tell
him. I daresay you've got some influence with him. That's why I've gone
into it with you."

"But you said you promised him not to tell all this about Esther. And
you've told me."

"That's why. Get him to work. Spur him up. Talk about his creditors. Now
run away. I want to read."

XVII

Lydia did run away and really ran, home, to see if the dear surroundings
of her life were intact after all she had heard. Since this temporary
seclusion in a melodramatic tale, she almost felt as if she should never
again see the vision of Mary Nellen making cake or Anne brushing her
long hair and looking like a placid saint. The library was dim, but she
heard interchanging voices there, and knew Jeffrey and his father were
in tranquil talk. So she sped upstairs to Anne's room, and there Anne
was actually brushing her hair and wearing precisely that look of
evening peace Lydia had seen so many times.

"I thought I'd go to bed early," she said, laying down the brush and
gathering round her hair to braid it. "Why, Lyd!"

It was a hot young messenger invading her calm. Anne looked like one
who, the day done, was placidly awaiting night; but Lydia was the day
itself, her activities still unfinished.

"I've found it out," she announced. "All of it. She made him do it."

Then, while Anne stared at her, she sat down and told her story,
vehemently, with breaks of breathless inquiry as to what Anne might
think of a thing like this, finally with dragging utterance, for her
vitality was gone; and at the end, challenging Anne with a glance, she
turned cold: for it cam