In the short story The Gypsy, Esther Lawes is the elder sister of Rachel Lawes. Dickie Carpenter met her and fell in love with her and they became engaged quickly. Then after a few weeks she told him that she didn't care for him and broke off the engagement, an event which left Dickie devastated. Macfarlane, Dickie's friend, who was engaged to Rachel, observed that Esther was a beauty. He had once heard her summed up as "Six foot one of Jewish perfection." To think of her was to recall "unusual height and the long slenderness of her, the marble whiteness of her face with its delicate down-drooping nose, and the black splendour of hair and eyes." For all that, Macfarlane found her sister Rachel "unutterably truer and sweeter."