Madame Beattie took off her hat and stabbed the pin through it. Her toupée, deranged by the act, perceptibly slid, but though she knew it by the feel, that eccentricity did not, in the company of a mere niece, trouble her at all. She sank into a chair and laid her hat on the neighbouring stand. "Where have you been?" repeated Esther, a pulse of something like anger beating through the words. Madame Beattie answered idly: "Up to see Jeff." "I knew it!" Esther breathed. "Of course," said Madame Beattie carelessly. "Jeff and I were quite friends in old times. I was glad I went. It cheered him up." "Did he--" Esther paused. "Ask for you?" supplied Madame Beattie pleasantly. "Not a word." Here Esther's curiosity did whip her on. She had to ask: "How does he look?" "Oh, youngish," said Madame. "Rather flabby. Obstinate. Ugly, too." "Ugly? Plain, do you mean?" "No. American for ugly--obstinate, sore-headed. He's hardened. He was rather a silly boy, I remember. Had enthusiasms. Much in love. He isn't now. He's no use for women." Esther looked at her in an arrested thoughtfulness. Madame Beattie could have laughed. She had delivered the challenge Jeff had not sent, and Esther was accepting it, wherever it might lead, to whatever duelling ground. Esther couldn't help that. A challenge was a challenge. She had to answer. It was a necessity of type. Madame Beattie saw the least little flickering thought run into her eyes, and knew she was involuntarily charting the means of summons, setting up the loom, as it were, to weave the magic web. She got up, took her hat, gave her toupée a little smack with the hand, and unhinged it worse than ever. "You'll have to give him up," she said. "Give him up!" flamed Esther. "Do you think I want--" There she paused and Madame Beattie supplied temperately: "No matter what you want. You couldn't have him." Then she went toiling upstairs, her chained ornaments clinking, and only when she had shut the door upon herself did she relax and smile over the simplicity of even a feminine creature so versed in obliquity as Esther. For Esther might want to escape the man who had brought disgrace upon her, but her flying feet would do her no good, so long as the mainspring of her life set her heart beating irrationally for conquest. Esther had to conquer even when the event would bring disaster: like a chieftain who would enlarge his boundaries at the risk of taking in savages bound to sow the dragon's teeth. IX