"Lydia!" said Anne. Was this the soft creature who crept to her arms of a cold night and who prettily had danced her way into public favour?
Alston Choate was looking thoughtful. It was not a story to be spread broadcast over Addington. He temporised.
"You see," he ventured, turning again to Lydia with his delightful smile which was, with no forethought of his own, tremendously persuasive, "you haven't told me yet what anybody is to get out of it."
"I thought I had," said Lydia, taking heart once more. If he talked reasonably with her, perhaps she could persuade him after all. "Why, don't you see? it's just as easy! I do, and I've only thought of it one night. Don't you see, Madame Beattie's here to hound Jeffrey into paying her for the necklace. That's going to kill him, just kill him. Anne, I should think you could see that."
Anne could see it if it were so. But Lydia, she thought, was building on a dream. The hideous old woman with the ostrich feathers had played a satiric joke on her, and here was Lydia in good faith assuming the joke was real.
"And if we can get this cleared up," said Lydia calmly, feeling very mature as she scanned their troubled faces, "Madame Beattie can just have her necklace back, and Jeff, instead of thinking he's got to start out with that tied round his neck, can set to work and pay his creditors."
Alston Choate was looking at her, frowning.
"Do you realise, Miss Lydia, what amount it is Jeffrey would have to pay his creditors? Unless he went into the market again and had a run of unbroken luck—and he's no capital to begin on—it's a thing he simply couldn't do. And as to the market, God forbid that he should ever think of it."
"Yes," said Anne fervently, "God forbid that. Farvie can't say enough against it."
Lydia's perfectly concrete faith was not impaired in the least.