"Oh, but we all know why he pleaded guilty," said Lydia. "It was to save somebody else."
"Not exactly to save her," said Miss Amabel. "She wouldn't have been tried, you know. She wasn't guilty in that sense. Of course she was, before the fact. But that's not being legally guilty. It's only morally so."
Lydia was staring at her with wide eyes.
"Do you mean Esther?" she asked.
"Why, yes, of course I mean Esther."
"But I don't. I mean that dreadful man."
She put her feet to the floor and sat upright, smoothing her hair with hurried fingers. At least if she could talk about it with some one who wasn't Anne with whom she had talked for years knowing exactly what Anne would say at every point, it seemed as if she were getting, even at a snail's pace, upon her road. But Miss Amabel was very dense.
"My dear," said she, "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean the man that was in the scheme with him, in a way, and got out and sold his shares while they were up, and let the crash come on Jeffrey when he was alone."
"James Reardon?"