r,' I shall say, 'get back to your
room and take that little bag with you. And make up to handsome Jeff and
tell him he's got to stir himself and pay me something on account. And
you can keep the diamonds, my dear, if you see Jeff pays me something.'"

"She'd rather give you the diamonds," said Lydia.

"My dear, she sets her life by them. Do you know what she's doing when
she goes to her room early and locks the door? She's sitting before the
glass with that necklace on, cursing God because there's no man to see
her."

"You can't know that," said Lydia.

She was trembling all over.

"My dear, I know women. When you're as old as I am, you will, too: even
the kind of woman Esther is. That type hasn't changed since the
creation, as they call it."

"But I don't like it," said Lydia. "I don't think it's fair. She hates
Jeff--"

"Nonsense. She doesn't hate any man. Jeff's poor, that's all."

"She does hate him, and yet you're going to make him pay money so she
can keep diamond necklaces she never ought to have had."

"Make him pay money for anything," said the old witch astutely, "money
he's got or money he hasn't got. Set his blood to moving, I tell you,
and before he knows it he'll be tussling for dear life and stamping on
the next man and getting to the top."

Lydia didn't want him to tussle, but she did want him at the top. She
had not told Madame Beattie about the manuscript growing and growing on
Jeff's table every night. It was his secret, his and hers, she reasoned;
she hugged the knowledge to her heart.

"That's all," said Madame Beattie, in that royal way of terminating
interviews when she wanted to get back to literature. "Only when he
begins to address his workingmen you tell me."

Lydia, on her way downstairs, passed Esther's room and even stood a
second breathlessly taking in its exquisite order. Here was the bower
where the enchantress slept, and where she touched up her beauty by the
secret processes Lydia, being very young and of a pollen-like freshness,
despised. This was not just of Lydia. Esther took no more than a normal
care of her complexion, and her personal habits were beyond praise.
Lydia stood there staring, her breath coming quick. Was the necklace
really there? If she saw it what could she do? If the little bag with
the necklace inside it sat there waiting to be taken to New York, what
could she do then? She fled softly down the stairs.

Addington was a good deal touched when Jeffr