"You remember the wife lost the borrowed necklace, and she and her husband ruined themselves to pay for it, and then they found it wasn't diamonds at all, but paste." "I remember," said Madame Beattie composedly. "But if it had been a necklace such as mine an imitation would have cost a pretty penny." "So it wasn't the necklace itself," he hazarded. "You wouldn't have brought a priceless thing over here. It was the imitation." Madame Beattie broke out, a shrill staccato, into something like anger. But it might not have been anger, he knew, only a means of hostile communication. "You are a rude young man to put words into my mouth, a rude young man." "I beg your pardon," said Alston. "But this is rather a serious matter. And I do want to know, as a friend of Mrs. Jeffrey Blake." "And counsel confided in by that imp," she supplied shrewdly. "Yes, counsel retained by Miss Lydia French. I want to know whether you had with you here in America the necklace given you by--" Here he hesitated. He wondered whether, according to her standards, he was unbearably insulting, or whether the names of royal givers could really be mentioned. "A certain Royal Personage," said Madame Beattie calmly. "Or," said Alston, beginning after a safe hiatus, "whether you had had an imitation made, and whether the necklace said to be lost was the imitation." "Well, then I'll tell you plainly," said Madame Beattie, in a cheerful concession, "I didn't have an imitation made. And you're quite within the truth with your silly 'said to be's.' For it was said to be lost. Esther said it. And she no more lost it than she went to New York that time to climb the Matterhorn. Do you know Esther?" "Yes," said Alston with a calculated dignity, "I know her very well." "Oh, I mean really know her, not enough to take her in to dinner or snatch your hat off to her." "Yes, I really know her."