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Denny nodded. He was a soft, loosely made man with a stubby moustache picked out in red and a cheerfully dishevelled air of having been up all night. "The folks moved out last week," said he. "You movin' in?" "Yes," Lydia supplied, knowing her superior capacity over the other two, for meeting the average man. "We're moving in. Farvie, got the checks?"

She had thought proudly of the tact she should show when this moment came, but she met it like a child. They sat down, and Anne poured coffee and asked how Farvie had slept. But before anybody had begun to eat, there was a knock at the front door, and Mary Nellen, answering it, came back to Anne, in a distinct puzzle over what was to be done now: "It's a newspaper man."

"Why, of course," she said, "we all know Farvie and Anne and I we know you never did it." "Did what?" "Lost all that money. Took it away from people." The softness of her voice was moving to him. He saw she meant him very well indeed. "Lydia," said he, "I lost the money. Don't make any mistake about that." "Yes, you were a promoter," she reminded him.

If she meant to enter on the task of exonerating Jeffrey, she must, she knew, make herself impervious to snubs. "Anne and I are doing all we can to help Jeffrey," she said. "He doesn't know it. Farvie doesn't know it. But there's something about a necklace. And it had ever so much to do with Jeffrey and his case. And I want to know." Madame Beattie chuckled.

"Who's been talking to you?" asked Madame Beattie: but Lydia looked at her and dumbly shook her head. "Jeff?" "No. Oh, no!" "His father?" "Farvie? Not a word." Madame Beattie considered. "What business is it of yours?" she asked. Lydia winced. She was used to softness from Anne and the colonel. But she controlled herself.

"I want to know how much you've got to live on, and whether these girls have anything, and whether they want to stay on with you or whether they're doing it because " Jeffrey now had a choking sense of emotions too big for him "because there's no other way out." "Do you mean," said Lydia, in a burst, before Anne's warning hand could stop her, "you want us to leave Farvie?"

"She is a very pretty woman," said her father, with a wise gentleness of his own. Lydia often saw him holding the balance for her intemperate judgments, his grain of gold forever equalising her dross. "I think she'd be called a beautiful woman. Jeff thought she was." "Do you actually believe, Farvie," said Lydia, "that she hasn't been to see him once in all these hideous years?"

"Don't draw long breaths, Farvie," said Lydia. "Anne and I are maiden ladies. You wouldn't breathe over us. We should feel terribly if you did." "I was thinking how still the house had been," said he. "It used to be ah, well! well!" "They grew old here, didn't they?" said Anne, her mind taking the maiden ladies into its hospitable shelter. "They were old when they came."

Lydia was hanging over the balustrade. "Who was it?" she asked, as Anne went up. Anne told her and because she looked dreamy and not displeased, Lydia asked: "Nice?" "Oh, yes," said Anne. "You've heard Farvie speak of him. Exactly what Farvie said." Lydia had gone some paces in undressing.

"But if you could find out, why haven't you done it before? Why have you waited all these years?" "Partly because we weren't grown up, Anne and I. And even when we were, when we'd begun to think about it, we were giving dancing lessons, to help out. You know Farvie put almost every cent he had into paying the creditors, and then it was only a drop in the bucket.