"Farvie thinks," said Lydia recklessly, "that you haven't written to him."
"How could I?" asked Esther, in a quick rebuttal which actually had a convincing sound, "when he didn't write to me?"
"But he was in prison."
"He hasn't had everything to bear," said Esther, rising and putting some figurines right on the mantel where they seemed to be right enough before. "Do you know any woman whose life has been ruined as mine has? Have you ever met one? Now have you?"
"Farvie's life is ruined," said Lydia incisively. "Jeff's life is ruined, too. I don't know whether it's any worse for a woman than for a man."
"Jeffrey," said Esther, "is taking the consequences of his own act."
"You don't mean to tell me you think he was to blame?" Lydia said, in a low tone charged with her own complexity of sentiment. She was horror-stricken chiefly. Esther saw that, and looked at her in a large amaze.
"You don't mean to tell me you think he wasn't?" she countered.
"Why, of course he wasn't!" Lydia's cheeks were flaming. She was impatiently conscious of this heat and her excited breath. But she had entered the fray, and there was no returning.
"Then who was guilty?" Esther asked it almost triumphantly, as if the point of proving herself right were more to her than the innocence of Jeff.