She had forgotten that he was to leave that afternoon on the train—forgotten everything, except the one subject which affected her so strongly, so that in one sense she might be said to be thinking of nothing, when, as she was walking with her head bent down, she came suddenly face to face with Harold, who, with his satchel in his hand, was starting for the train due now in a few minutes.
"Jerrie," he exclaimed, "how late you are! I waited until the last minute to say good-by. Why, what ails you, and where have you been?" he continued, as she raised her head and he saw the strange palor of her face.
"In the Tramp House," she answered, in a voice which was not hers at all, and made Harold look more curiously at her.
As he did so he saw peeping from a fold of the silk handkerchief the corner of the tortoise-shell box which he remembered so well, and the sight of which brought back all the shame and humiliation and pain of that morning when he had been suspected of taking it.
"What is it? What have you in your hand?" he asked.
Then Jerrie's face, so pale before, turned scarlet, and her eyes had in them a wild look which Harold construed into fear, as, without a word, she laid the box in his hand, and stood watching him as he opened it.
Harold's face was whiter than Jerrie's had been, and his voice trembled as he said, in a whisper:
"Mrs. Tracy's diamonds!"
"Yes, Mrs. Tracy's diamonds," Jerrie replied, with a marked emphasis on the Mrs. Tracy.
"How came you by them, and where did you find them," Harold asked next, shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed like fiery eyes confronting him.