"Jerrie! How did you get here?"
Then all turned and looked at her, and crowded around her with exclamations of surprise and wonder.
For a moment Jerrie stood like one in a catalepsy, with no power to move or speak, but when Mrs. Tracy came forward, and in her iciest tones said to her: "Good-afternoon, Miss Crawford. To what am I indebted for this unexpected pleasure?" her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened, and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a bell, and was, indeed, the knell to all the lady's greatness:
"I am here to claim my own, and to clear Harold from the foul suspicion heaped upon him. I have seen the paper, have heard the whole from grandma, and am here to defend him. It was I who gave him the diamonds! It was for me he kept silent, and let you think what you would."
"You gave him the diamonds?" Mrs. Tracy repeated, "you gave him the diamonds! and have come to confess yourself a—"
She never finished the sentence, for something in Jerrie's face frightened her, while her husband, who had come forward, laid his hand warningly upon her arm.
So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little girl, who at the sound of Jerrie's voice had, in her eagerness to see her, crept down the stairs, and now stood in the door-way opposite to Jerrie, her large, bright eyes looking in wonder upon the scene, and her ears listening intently to what was as new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.
"Don't give me the name you have more than once given to Harold," Jerrie said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy. "The diamonds are mine, not yours. Can one steal his own?"
"Yours! Your diamonds! What do you mean?" Mrs. Tracy asked.
"They were my mother's," Jerrie replied, "and she sent them to me."