d beauty. What if she
were to tell him how they talked of Esther and her cruelty, and of him
and his misfortunes, and of the need of his at once setting out to
reconstruct his life? But it would not do. This youth here astride the
chair didn't seem like the Jeff who was woven into all she could imagine
of tragedy and pain. He looked like the Jeff she had heard the colonel
tell about, who had been reckless and impulsive and splendid, and had
been believed in always and then had grown up into a man who made and
lost money and was punished for it. He was speaking now in his new
coaxing voice.

"There's one thing you could tell me. That wouldn't do any harm."

"What?" asked Lydia.

"Your old crony must have mentioned the night we ran away with Weedon
Moore's automobile."

"Oh, yes," said Lydia. Her eyes were eloquent now. "She told me."

"Did she tell you what she said to Weedon's crowd, to turn them round
like a flock of sheep and bring them over to us?"

"Oh, yes, she told me."

"What was it?"

But Lydia again looked obstinate, though she ventured a little plea of
her own.

"Jeff, you must go into politics."

"Not on your life."

"The way is all prepared."

"Who prepared it? Madame Beattie?"

"You are going," said Lydia, this irrepressibly and against her
judgment, "to be the most popular man in Addington."

"Gammon!" This he didn't think very much of. If this was how Lydia and
Madame Beattie spent their hours of talk, let them, the innocents. It
did nobody harm. But he was still conscious of a strong desire: to
protect Lydia, in her child's innocence, from evil. He wondered if she
were not busy enough, that she had time to take up Madame Beattie. Yet
she and Anne seemed as industrious as little ants.

"Lydia," said he, "what if I should have an Italian fruit-seller come up
here to the house and teach Italian to you and me--and maybe Anne?"

"Andrea?" she asked.

"Do you know him?"

"Madame Beattie does." She coloured slightly, as if all Madame Beattie's
little secrets were to be guarded.

"We'll have him up here if he'll come, and we'll learn to pass the bread
in Italian. Shall we?"

"I'd love to," said Lydia. "We're learning now, Anne and I."

"Of Andrea?"

"Oh, no. But we're picking up words as fast as we can, all kinds of
dialects. From the classes, you know, Miss Amabel's classes. It's
ridiculous to be seeing these foreigners twice a week and not understand
them or not have them half un