his certainty of having something difficult to meet. It was not thus he
had been used to greet her on sweet October mornings in those other
days. Suddenly he turned with a quick gesture of the hand as if he were
warning some one back, and Esther, almost at the steps, understood that
he had heard Lydia coming and had tried to stop her. Lydia evidently
had not understood and ran innocently out on some errand of her own.
Seeing Esther, she halted an appreciable instant. Then something as
quickly settled itself in her mind, and she advanced and stood at the
side of Jeff. Esther furled her parasol and came up the steps, and her
face did not for an instant change in its sweet seriousness. She looked
at Lydia with a faint, almost, it might seem, a pitying smile.

"I thought," said she, "after what I said, I ought to come, to reassure
you."

Neither Jeff nor Lydia seemed likely to move, and Esther stood there
looking from one to the other with her concerned air of having something
to do for them. It was only a moment, yet it seemed to Lydia as if they
had been communing a long time, in some hidden fashion, and learning
amazingly to understand each other. That is, she was understanding
Esther, and the outcome terrified her. Esther seemed more dangerous than
ever, bearing gifts. But Lydia could almost always do the sensible thing
in an emergency and keep emotion to be quelled in solitude.

"Come in," said she, "and sit down. Jeff, won't you move the chairs into
the shady corner? We'd better not go into the library. Farvie's there."

Jeff awoke from his tranced surprise and the two women followed him to
the seclusion of the vines. There Esther took the chair he set for her,
and looked gravely at Lydia, as she said:

"I was very hasty. I told him--" She indicated Jeff with a little
gesture. It seemed she found some significance in the informality of the
pronoun--"I told him I had found out who took the necklace. I knew of
course he would tell you. And I came to keep you from being troubled."

"Lydia," said Jeff, with the effect of stepping quickly in between them,
"go into the house. This is something that doesn't concern you in the
least."

Lydia, very pale now, was looking at Esther, in a fixed antagonism. Her
hands were tightly clasped. She looked like a creature braced against a
blow. But Esther seemed of all imaginable persons the least likely to
deliver a blow of any sort. She was gracefully relaxed in her chair, one