'There was something more,' she whispered, trying to think what it was.
Then, as her eye fell upon the first package she had taken out, and which was wrapped in a silk handkerchief, she took it up, and removing the covering, started as suddenly as if a blow had been dealt her, for there was the tortoise-shell box, with its blue satin lining, and its diamonds, which seemed to her like so many sparks of fire flashing in her eyes and dazzling her with their brilliancy.
Just such a box as this, and just such diamonds as these, Mrs. Frank Tracy had lost years ago, and as Jerrie held them in her hand and turned them to the light, till they showed all the hues of the rainbow, she experienced a feeling of terror as if she were a thief and had been convicted of the theft. Then, as she remembered what she had read, she burst into a hysterical fit of laughing and crying together, and whispered to herself:
'I believe I am going mad like him.'
After a time she arose, and with the bag on her arm and the diamonds in her hand, she started for home, with only one thought in her mind:
'I must tell Harold, and ask him what to do.'
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-bye. Why, what ails you, and where have you been?' he continued, as she raised her head and he saw the bruise on her forehead and the strange pallor of her face.
'In the Tramp House,' the 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 memorable morning when he had been suspected of taking it.