It was still broad afternoon when Rosanne walked openly into Syke Ravenal's shop, bag in hand. The benevolent-faced old man, occupied in cleaning the works of a watch, looked up with the bland inquiring glance of a tradesman to a customer. But his face changed when he saw her eyes.
"You have news?" he asked, in a low tone.
"Take me to the inner room," she ordered curtly. Without demur, he led the way. The moment the door closed on them she flung the heavy leather bag on to the table.
"Take them," she cried wildly; "take them back! They are all there.
Not one is missing."
"Hush, my child—hush!" he gently urged. But she would not be hushed.
"I hate you," she said passionately. "I curse the day I entered this shop, an innocent girl, and was beguiled by you and your son and my mad passion for diamonds into becoming your tool and accomplice. Oh, how I hate you! I can never betray you because of my oath, but I curse you both, and I pray I may never see or hear of you again."
"That's all right, my child," he said soothingly. She threw him one glance of loathing and contempt and walked from the place.
Rosanne had taken to her bed again, and this time when they brought the doctor she was too ill to object, too ill to do anything but lie staring in a sort of mental and physical coma at the ceiling above her.
"Let her be," said the old-fashioned family doctor, who had known her from babyhood. "She has a splendid constitution and will pull through. But let her have no worries of any kind."
So they left her alone, except in the matter of ministering occasional nourishment, which she took with the mechanical obedience of a child.