ive?"

"Yes, Madame Beattie," said Lydia. "I love to."

"Then we'll have a phaeton, and you shall drive."

Nobody knew there was a phaeton left in Addington. But nobody had known
there was a victoria, and when Madame Beattie had set her mind upon
each, it was in due course forthcoming, vehicles apparently of an equal
age and the same extent of disrepair. So they set forth together, the
strange couple, and jogged, as Madame Beattie said. She would send the
unwilling Sophy, who had a theory that she was to serve Esther and
nobody else, and that scantily, over with a note. The Blake house had
no telephone. Jeff, for unformulated reasons, owned to a nervous
distaste for being summoned. And the note would say:

"Do you want to jog?"

Lydia always wanted to, and she found it the more engaging because
Madame Beattie told her it drove Esther to madness and despair.

"She's furious," said Madame Beattie, with her lisp. "It's very silly of
her. She doesn't want to go with me herself. Not that I'd have her. But
you are an imp, my dear, and I like you."

This warm morning, full of sun and birds, they were jogging up Haldon
Hill, a way they took often because it only led down again and motorists
avoided it. Madame Beattie, still thickly clad and nodded over by
plumes, lounged and held her parasol with the air of ladies in the Bois.
Lydia, sitting erect and hatless, looked straight ahead, though the
reins were loose, anxiously piercing some obscurity if she might, but
always a mental one. Her legal affairs were stock still. Alston Choate
talked with her cordially, though gravely, about her case, dissuading
her always, but she was perfectly aware he was doing nothing. When she
taxed him with it, he reminded her that he had told her there was
nothing to do. But he assured her everything would be attempted to save
her father and Anne from anxiety, and incidentally herself. About this
Madame Beattie was asking her now, as they jogged under the flicker of
leaves.

"What has that young man done for you, my dear, young Choate?"

"Nothing," said Lydia.

She put her lips together and thought what she would do if she were
Jeff.

"But isn't he agitating anything?"

"Agitating?"

"Yes. That's what he must do, you know. That's all he can do."

Lydia turned reproachful eyes upon her.

"You think so, too," she said.

"Why, yes, dear imp, I know it. Jeff's case is ancient history.
We can't do anything practical about it, so what