ogether and need not even say so. Yet they were not here
at all. They were boys of Addington, trotting along side by side in the
inherited games of Addington. Alston offered Jeffrey a smoke, and Jeff
refused it.

"See here," said he, "what's Madame Beattie up to?"

Choate turned a startled glance on him. He did not see how Jeffrey, a
stranger in his wife's house, should know anything at all was up.

"She's been making things rather lively," he owned. "Who told you?"

"Told me? I was in it, at the beginning. She and I drove out by chance,
to hear Moore doing his stunt in the circus-ground. That began it. But
now, it seems, she's got some devil's influence over Moore's gang. She's
told 'em something queer about me."

"She's told 'em something that makes things infernally uncomfortable for
other people," said Choate bluntly. "Did you know she had squads of
them--Italians, Poles, Abyssinians, for all I know, playing on
dulcimers--she's had them come up at night and visit her in her bedroom.
They jabber and hoot and smoke, I believe. She's established an informal
club--in that house."

Alston's irritation was extreme. It was true Addington to refer to
foreign tongues as jabber, and "that house", Jeffrey saw, was a stiff
paraphrase for Esther's dwelling-place. He perceived here the same angry
partisanship Reardon had betrayed. This was the jealous fire kindled
invariably in men at Esther's name.

"How do you know?" he asked.

Alston hesitated. He looked, not abashed, but worried, as if he did not
see precisely the road of good manners in giving a man more news about
his wife than the man was able to get by himself.

"Did Esther tell you?" Jeff inquired.

"Yes. She told me."

"When?"

"Several times. She has been very uncomfortable. She has needed
counsel."

Choate had gone on piling up what might have been excuses for Esther,
from an irritated sense that he was being too closely cross-examined. He
had done a good deal of it himself in the way of his profession, and he
was aware that it always led to conclusions the victim had not foreseen
and was seldom willing to face. And he had in his mind not wholly
recognised yet unwelcome feelings about Esther. They were not feelings
such as he would have allowed himself if he had known her as a young
woman living with her husband in the accepted way. He did not permit
himself to state that Esther herself might not, in that case, have
mingled for him the atmosphere she