Mrs. Cole-Mortimer was a devout Catholic and it might easily be some cherished keep-sake of hers.
The girl carried the cross to the window; an "X" had been scrawled by some sharp-pointed instrument at the junction of the bars. There was no other mark to identify the trinket.
She put the cross in her bag, and when she saw Mrs. Cole-Mortimer again she forgot to ask her about it.
The car drove her into Nice alone. Jean did not feel inclined to make the journey and Lydia rather enjoyed the solitude.
The isolation hospital was at the top of the hill and she found some difficulty in obtaining admission at this hour. The arrival of the chief medical officer, however, saved her from making the journey in vain. The report he gave about the child was very satisfactory; the mother was in the isolation ward.
"Can she be seen?"
"Yes, madame," said the urbane Frenchman in charge. "You understand, you will not be able to get near her? It will be rather like interviewing a prisoner, for she will be behind one set of bars and you behind another."
Lydia was taken to a room which was, she imagined, very much like a room in which prisoners interviewed their distressed relations. There were not exactly bars, but two large mesh nets of steel separated the visitor from the patient under observation. After a time a nun brought in the gardener's wife, a tall, gaunt woman, who was a native of Marseilles, and spoke the confusing patois of that city with great rapidity. It was some time before Lydia could accustom her ear to the queer dialect.
Her boy was getting well, she said, but she herself was in terrible trouble. She had no money for the extra food she required. Her husband who was away in Paris when the child had been taken, had not troubled to write to her. It was terrible being in a place amongst other fever cases, and she was certain that her days were numbered....
Lydia pushed a five-hundred franc note through the grating to the nun, to settle her material needs.