And I do. We'll leave Lydia out of this. I don't
know what you've come here to say, Madame Beattie, but whatever it is, I
prefer it should be said to me. I'm the only one it concerns."

"No, you're not," said Lydia, swelling with rage at everybody who would
keep her from him. "I'm concerned. I'm concerned more than anybody."

Esther glanced up at her quickly and Madame Beattie shook her head.

"You've been a silly child, too," she said. "You took the necklace to
give it back to me. Through Jeff, I understand."

"No, I didn't," said Lydia, in a passion to tell the truth at a moment
when it seemed to her they were all willing, for one result or another,
to turn and twist it. "I gave it back to Jeff so he could carry it to
you and say, 'Here it is. I've paid you a lot of money on it--'"

"Who told you that?" flashed Esther. She had forgotten her patient calm.

"I told her," said Madame Beattie. "Don't be jealous, Esther. Jeff never
would have told her in the world. He's as dumb as a fish."

"And so he could say to you," Lydia went on breathlessly, "'Here's the
horrid thing. And now you've got it I don't owe you money but'"--here
one of her legal inspirations came to her and she added
triumphantly--"'if anything, you owe me.'"

"You're a good imp," said Madame Beattie, in careless commendation, "but
if everybody told the truth as you do there wouldn't be any drama. Now
I'm going to tell the truth. This is just what I propose doing, and what
I mean somebody else shall do. I've got the necklace. Good! But I don't
want it. I want money."

"I have told you," said Jeff, "to sell it. If it's worth what you say--"

"I have told you," said Madame Beattie, "that I can't. It is a question
of honour," she ended somewhat pompously. Yet it was only a dramatic
pomposity. Jeff saw that. "When it was given me by a certain Royal
Personage," she continued and Jeff swore under his breath. He was tired
of the Royal Personage--"I signed an agreement that the necklace should
be preserved intact and that I would never let it go into other hands.
We've been all over that."

Jeff moved uneasily in his chair. He thought there were things he might
say to Madame Beattie if the others were not present.

"But," said Madame Beattie dramatically, "Esther stole it. Lydia here,
from the sweetest and most ridiculous of motives, stole it from Esther.
Nobody knows that but us three and that cold-blooded fish, Alston
Choate. He won't tell. But unle