"And, oh, madame," wailed the gardener's wife, "my poor little boy has lost the gift of the Reverend Mother of San Surplice! His own cross which has been blessed by his holiness the Pope! It is because I left his cross in his little shirt that he is getting better, but now it is lost and I am sure these thieving doctors have taken it."
"A cross?" said Lydia. "What sort of a cross?"
"It was a silver cross, madame; the value in money was nothing—it was priceless. Little Xavier——"
"Xavier?" repeated Lydia, remembering the "X" on the trinket that had been found in her bed. "Wait a moment, madame." She opened her bag and took out the tiny silver symbol, and at the sight of it the woman burst into a volley of joyful thanks.
"It is the same, the same, madame! It has a small 'X' which the Reverend Mother scratched with her own blessed scissors!"
Lydia pushed the cross through the net and the nun handed it to the woman.
"It is the same, it is the same!" she cried. "Oh, thank you, madame! Now my heart is glad...."
Lydia came out of the hospital and walked through the gardens by the doctor's side. But she was not listening to what he was saying—her mind was fully occupied with the mystery of the silver cross.
It was little Xavier's ... it had been tucked inside his bed when he lay, as his mother thought, dying ... and it had been found in her bed! Then little Xavier had been in her bed! Her foot was on the step of the car when it came to her—the meaning of that drenched couch and the empty bottle of peroxide. Xavier had been put there, and somebody who knew that the bed was infected had so soaked it with water that she could not sleep in it. But who? Old Jaggs!
She got into the car slowly, and went back to Cap Martin along the Grande Corniche.