And it was not Lydia who saw her coming. It was Jeff, in his working blouse and shabby trousers, standing on a cool corner of the veranda and finishing his morning smoke before he went out to picking early apples. Esther knew at precisely what instant he caught sight of her, and saw him knock out his pipe into the garden bed below the veranda and lay it on the rail. Then he waited for her, and she was almost amusedly prepared for his large-eyed wonder and the set of the jaw which betrayed his certainty of having something difficult to meet. It was not thus he had been used to greet her on sweet October mornings in those other days. Suddenly he turned with a quick gesture of the hand as if he were warning some one back, and Esther, almost at the steps, understood that he had heard Lydia coming and had tried to stop her. Lydia evidently had not understood and ran innocently out on some errand of her own. Seeing Esther, she halted an appreciable instant. Then something as quickly settled itself in her mind, and she advanced and stood at the side of Jeff. Esther furled her parasol and came up the steps, and her face did not for an instant change in its sweet seriousness. She looked at Lydia with a faint, almost, it might seem, a pitying smile.
"I thought," said she, "after what I said, I ought to come, to reassure you."
Neither Jeff nor Lydia seemed likely to move, and Esther stood there looking from one to the other with her concerned air of having something to do for them. It was only a moment, yet it seemed to Lydia as if they had been communing a long time, in some hidden fashion, and learning amazingly to understand each other. That is, she was understanding Esther, and the outcome terrified her. Esther seemed more dangerous than ever, bearing gifts. But Lydia could almost always do the sensible thing in an emergency and keep emotion to be quelled in solitude.
"Come in," said she, "and sit down. Jeff, won't you move the chairs into the shady corner? We'd better not go into the library. Farvie's there."
Jeff awoke from his tranced surprise and the two women followed him to the seclusion of the vines. There Esther took the chair he set for her, and looked gravely at Lydia, as she said:
"I was very hasty. I told him—" She indicated Jeff with a little gesture. It seemed she found some significance in the informality of the pronoun—"I told him I had found out who took the necklace. I knew of course he would tell you. And I came to keep you from being troubled."
"Lydia," said Jeff, with the effect of stepping quickly in between them, "go into the house. This is something that doesn't concern you in the least."
Lydia, very pale now, was looking at Esther, in a fixed antagonism. Her hands were tightly clasped. She looked like a creature braced against a blow. But Esther seemed of all imaginable persons the least likely to deliver a blow of any sort. She was gracefully relaxed in her chair, one delicate hand holding the parasol and the other resting, with the fingers upcurled like lily petals, on her knee.
"No," said Lydia, not looking at Jeff, though she answered him, "I sha'n't go in. It does concern me. That's what she came for. She's told you so. To accuse me of taking it."
With the last words, a little scorn ran into her voice. It was a scorn of what Esther might do, and it warmed her and made her suddenly feel equal to the moment.