“What is the matter with him?” he thought. “Money-troubles, most likely. He doesn’t seem the kind of man to be crossed in love—unless the girl he wanted liked somebody else before she saw him. Perhaps that has happened. I hope he will come back a little more cheerful.”
Gilardoni turned to go back to his master’s rooms. As he moved, a small, folded package lying a few steps from him caught his quick eye. He stooped and picked it up.
Before opening it, as there was nothing on the outside of the thin tissue-paper to indicate who the owner might be, he felt it over with his fingers.
“Feels like a small cross,” he said to himself. “I wonder if the captain dropped it when he pulled out his handkerchief just now.”
He unfolded the paper, and displayed to view a small gold cross, such as are worn as a pendant on the watch-chain.
Gilardoni regarded this with an air of the most unqualified amazement, mingled with an expression that seemed to indicate rage and contending sensations of no very agreeable kind. For several moments he remained as if carved in stone, fixedly looking upon the trinket. It was a comparatively inexpensive toy, made of burnished gold, set with blue stones on one side, perfectly plain on the other.
“It is impossible,” Gilardoni murmured, at length, raising his eyes, which wore a singularly startled expression. “Oh! it cannot be the same. Why, they make these things by the hundred. How could it be possible that it could come into the possession of Captain Desfrayne? Yet—yet it must be my fatal love-gift.”
He abruptly turned the cross, and looked at the nethermost point. Thereon was very inartistically cut or engraved a tiny heart pierced by an arrow.
“Cielo!” he cried, starting back. “It is the same. Then has it been dropped by the captain, or how has it come here? Am I dreaming? Am I going mad?”
He turned slowly, and walked toward the barracks, his head sunk upon his breast, as if he were overwhelmed by painful reflections and memories.