Choate turned his eyes away from her face as if it hurt him. The taunt hurt him, too, like unclean words from lips beloved. But he looked involuntarily at Jeff to see how he had taken them. Jeff stood in silence looking gravely at Esther, but yet as if he did not see her. He appeared to be thinking deeply. But presently he spoke, and as if still from deep reflection.
"It's true, Esther. I'm a prisoner, too. I'm trying to see how I can get out."
Choate spoke here, adopting the terms of Jeff's own fancy.
"If you want us all to understand each other, you could tell Esther why you took the necklace. You could tell us both. We seem to be thrown together over this."
"Yes," said Jeff. "I could. I must. And yet I can't." He looked up at Alston with a smile so whimsical that involuntarily Alston met it with a glimmer of a smile. "Choate, it looks as if I should have to be a prisoner a little longer—perhaps for life."
He went toward the door like a man bound on an urgent errand, and involuntarily Alston turned to follow him. The sight hurt Esther like an indignity. They had forgotten her. Their man's country called them to settle man's deeds, and the accordance of their going lashed her brain to quick revolt. It had been working, that shrewd, small brain, through all their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having taken the necklace, and now it offered its result.
"You didn't take it at all," she called after them. "It was that girl that's had the entry to this house. It's Lydia French."
XXX
At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeff was inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, the down-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry. They walked along the street together and it was Choate who began awkwardly.