he sinkingly felt he had
no confidence in her. But he recovered himself. That was not like Anne.
She had not recovered at all.

"Will you sit down?" he said.

He drew forward a chair. It faced the light, and Lydia noted, when he
had taken the opposite one, that they were in the technical position for
inquisitor and victim. He waited scrupulously, and when she had seated
herself, also sat down.

"Now," said he.

It was gravely said, and reconciled Lydia somewhat to the hardness of
her task. At least he would not really make light of her, like Anne.
Only your family could do that. She sat there charming, childlike even,
all soft surfaces and liquid gleam of eyes, so very young that she was
wistful in it. She hesitated in her beginning.

"I understand," she said, "that everything I say to you will be in
confidence. O Mr. Choate!" she implored him, with a sudden breaking of
her self-possession, "you wouldn't tell, would you?"

Alston Choate did not allow a glint to lighten the grave kindliness of
his glance. Perhaps he felt no amusement; she was his client and very
sweet.

"Never," said he, in the manner of an uncle to a child. "Tell me
anything you like. I shall respect your confidence."

"I saw Madame Beattie last night," said Lydia; and she went on to tell
what Madame Beattie had said. She warmed to it, and being of a dramatic
type, she coloured the story as Madame Beattie might have done. There
was a shade of cynicism here, a tang of worldliness there; and it
sounded like the hardest fact. But when she came to Esther, she saw his
glance quicken and fasten on hers the more keenly, and when she told him
Madame Beattie believed the necklace had not been lost at all, he was
looking at her with astonishment even.

"You say--" he began, and made her rehearse it all again in snatches. He
cross-examined her, not, it seemed, as if he wished to prove she lied,
but to take in her monstrous truth. And after they had been over it two
or three times and she felt excited and breathless and greatly fagged by
the strain of saying the same thing in different ways, she saw in his
face the look she had seen in Anne's.

"Why," she cried out, in actual pain, "you don't believe me."

Choate didn't answer that. He sat for a minute, considering gravely, and
then threw down the paper knife he had been bending while she talked. It
was ivory, and it gave a little shallow click on the table and that,
slight as it was, made her nerves