He rose heavily and followed her, but in the library he did not sit down. Esther sank into a low chair, leaned back in it and closed her eyes. She really needed to give way a little. Her nerves were trembling from the shock of more than one attack on them; fear, anger, these were what her husband and Madame Beattie had roused in her. Jeffrey was refusing to help her, and she hated him. But here was another man deftly moved to her proximity by the ever careful hand of providence that had made the creatures for her. Alston stood by the mantel, leaning one elbow on it, with a strange implication of wanting to put his head down and hide his face. "Esther!" said he. There was no pretence now of being on terms too distant to let him use her name. She looked up at him, softly and appealingly, though he was not looking at her. But Esther, if she had played Othello, would have blacked herself all over. Alston began again in a voice of what sounded like an extreme of irritation. "For God's sake, tell me about this thing." "You know all I do," she said brokenly. "I don't know anything," said Choate. "You tell me your husband----" "Don't call him that," she entreated. "Your husband entered this house and took the necklace. I want to know where he took it from." "She told you," said Esther scornfully. He gained a little courage now and ventured to look at her. If she could repel Madame Beattie's insinuation, it must mean she had something on her side. And when he looked he wondered, in a rush of pity, how he could have felt anything for that crushed figure but ruth and love. So when he spoke again his voice was gentler, and Esther's courage leaped to meet it. "I am told the necklace was in your bag. How did it get there?" "I don't know," said Esther, in a perfect clarity. His new formed hope crumbled. He could hear inexorably, like a counter cry, Lydia's voice, saying, "She stole it." Had Esther stolen it? But Esther did not know Lydia had said it, or that it had ever been said to him at all, and she was daring more than she would have dared if she had known of that antagonist. "It is a plot between them," she said boldly. "Between whom?" "Aunt Patricia and him." "What is the plot?" "I don't know." "If you think there was a plot, you must have made up your mind what the plot was and what they were to gain by it. What do you believe the plot to have been?" This was all very stupid, Esther felt, when he might be assuring her of his unchanged and practical devotion. "Oh, I don't know," she said irritably. "How should I know?" "You wouldn't think there was a plot without having some idea of what it was," he was insisting, in what she thought his stupid way. "What is your idea it was?" This was really, she saw, the same question over again, which was another instance of his heavy literalness. She had to answer, she knew now, unless she was to dismiss him, disaffected.