thought, nothing whatever to do with her stealing
a necklace, if she happened to like necklaces. She considered herself a
lady, but she could also see herself, under temptation, doing a
desperado's deeds. Not stealing a necklace: that was tawdry larceny. But
she could see herself trapping Esther in a still place and cutting her
dusky hair off so that she'd betray no more men. For she began to
suspect that Alston Choate, too, was caught in the lure of Esther's
inexplicable charm. Lydia was at the moment of girlhood nearly done
where her accumulated experience, half of it not understood, was
prepared to spring to life and crystallise into clearest knowledge. She
was a child still, but she was ready to be a woman. Alston Choate now
was gazing at her with his charming smile, and Lydia hardened under it,
certain the smile was meant for mere persuasiveness.

"Besides," he said, "the necklace wasn't yours. You don't want to bring
Mrs. Blake to book for stealing a necklace which isn't your own?"

"But I'm not doing it for myself," said Lydia instantly. "It's for
Jeffrey."

"But, Jeffrey--" Alston paused. He wanted to put it with as little
offence as might be. "Jeffrey has been tried for a certain offence and
found guilty."

"He wasn't really guilty," said Lydia. "Can't you see he wasn't? Esther
stole the necklace, and Madame Beattie wanted it paid for, and Jeffrey
tried to do it and everything went to pieces. Can't you really see?"

She asked it anxiously, and Alston answered her with the more gentleness
because her solicitude made her so kind and fair.

"Now," said he, "this is the way it is. Jeffrey pleaded guilty and was
sentenced. If everything you say is true--we'll assume it is--he would
have been tried just the same, and he would have been sentenced just the
same. I don't say his counsel mightn't have whipped up a lot of sympathy
from the jury, but he wouldn't have got off altogether. And besides, you
wouldn't have had him escape in any such conceivable way. You wouldn't
have had him shield himself behind his wife."

Lydia was looking at him with brows drawn tight in her effort to get
quite clearly what she thought might prove at any instant a befogged
technicality. But it all sounded reasonable enough, and she gratefully
understood he was laying aside the jurist's phraseology for her sake.

"But," said she, "mightn't Esther have been tried for stealing the
necklace?"

He couldn't help laughing, she seemed so i