at can you do?"

"I shall consult that dirty little man. He's a lawyer and he's not in
love with her."

"Mr. Moore? You haven't much time, Madame Beattie. She'll be going."

"That's why I'm dressed," said Madame Beattie. "I shall go in a minute.
He can give me a warrant or something to search her things."

Lydia went at once, with a noiseless foot. She felt a sudden distaste
for the accomplished fact of Esther face to face with justice. Yet she
did not flinch in her certainty that nemesis must be obeyed and even
aided. Only the secrecy of it led her to a hatred of her own silent ways
in the house, and as she often did, she turned to her right instead of
to her left and walked to the front stairs. There at her hand was
Esther's room, the door wide open. Downstairs she could hear her voice
in colloquy with Sophy. Rhoda's voice, on this floor, made some curt
remark. Everybody was accounted for. Lydia's heart was choking her, but
she stepped softly into Esther's room. It seemed to her, in her
quickened feeling, that she could see clairvoyantly through the matter
that kept her from her quest. A travelling bag, open, stood on the
floor. There was a hand-bag on the bed, and Lydia, as if taking a
predestined step, went to it, slipped the clasp and looked. A purse was
there, a tiny mirror, a book that might have been an address book, and
in the bottom a roll of tissue paper. Nothing could have stopped her
now. She had to know what was in the roll. It was a lumpy parcel, thrown
together in haste as if, perhaps, Esther had thought of making it look
as if it were of no account. She tore it open and found, with no
surprise, as if this were an old dream, the hard brightness of the
jewels.

"There it is," she whispered to herself, with the scant breath her
choking heart would lend her. "Oh, there it is!"

She rolled the necklace in its paper and closed the bag. With no
precaution she walked out of the room and down the stairs. The voices
still went on, Esther's and Sophy's from the library, and she did not
know whether Madame Beattie had already left the house. But opening the
front door, still with no precaution, she closed it sharply behind her
and walked along the street in sunshine that hurt her eyes.

Lydia went straight home, not thinking at all about what she had done,
but wondering what she should do now. Suddenly she felt the
unfriendliness of the world. Madame Beattie, her ally up to this moment,
was now a foe. For w