crupulous politeness. "No, thank you. I shall
walk."

But before she went, and well in the rear of the carriage, so that even
Denny should not see, she gave Jeff one look, a suffused, appealing look
that bade him remember how unhappy she was, how unprotected and, most of
all, how feminine. She and the carriage also had in the next instant
gone, and Jeff went stolidly back up the steps. There was sweat on his
forehead and he drew his breath like a man dead-tired.

"My son," began the colonel.

"Don't," said Jeff shortly. He knew what his father would like to do:
ask, in the sincerest sympathy, why Esther had come, discuss it and
decide with him whether she was to come again and stay, whether it would
be ill or well for him. The red mounted to the colonel's forehead, and
Jeff put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't help remembering that his
father had called him "son" in a poignancy of sympathy all through the
trials of the past, and it hurt to hear it now. It linked that time with
this, as Madame Beattie, in her unabashed self-seeking, linked it.
Perhaps he was never to escape. A prisoner, that was what he was. They
were all prisoners, Madame Beattie to her squalid love of gain, Esther
to her elementary love of herself, Lydia--he looked at her as she stood
still in the background like a handmaid waiting. Why, Lydia was a
prisoner, as he had thought before, only not, as he had believed then,
to the glamour of love, but love, actual love for him, the kind that
stands the stress of all the homely services and disillusioning. A smile
broke over his face, and Lydia, incredulously accepting it, gave a
little sob that couldn't be prevented in time, and took one dancing
step. She ran up to the colonel, and pulled him away from Jeff. It
seemed as if she were about to make him dance, too.

"Don't bother him, Farvie," said she. "He's out of prison! he's out of
prison!"

She had said it, the cruel word, and Jeff knew she could not possibly
have ventured it if she did not see in him something fortunate and
free.

XXXIII

"Jeff!" said the colonel. Esther's coming seemed so portentous that he
could not brook imperfect knowledge of it. "Jeff, did Esther come to--"
He paused there. What could Esther, in the circumstances, do? Make
advances? Ask to be forgiven?

But Jeff was meeting the half question comprehensively.

"I don't quite know what she came for."

"Couldn't you have persuaded her," said the colonel, hesitat