“I am strong!” she cried aloud. “The summer, this wild life, has renewed my powers.”
But Jeanne? Ah, there was the question. She had accepted a mission. She had agreed to take the little French girl into the north woods and see that she had rest. Had she performed this mission well or ill?
To this question she could form no certain answer. Life in this out-of-the-way place had so pressed in upon her, adventure and mystery had so completely taken possession of her, that she had found too little time to think of Jeanne.
“What if I have failed?” Her heart sank. “What if the doctor says I have failed?”
Jeanne was asleep in her stateroom. She seemed well and happy, quite prepared for the great testing which lay just before her. But who could tell?
“So often,” she thought to herself, “we are led away from the main purpose of our lives by some surprising affair which springs straight up before our eyes and for the moment blinds us.”
Yet, as she reviewed the events of the past weeks she experienced few regrets. She had been working, not for her own glory, but that others might find success and happiness.
“But what came of it all?” she asked herself. “What mysteries did we solve?”
The problems that had perplexed her now passed, like soldiers on parade, before her mind’s eye. Who had run them down and all but drowned them on that first night? The gamblers? The gypsies? Green Eyes and her rich friends? She had found no answer.
Where were the three priceless rubies? Did they lie among the ashes of the gamblers’ cottage? Had the gamblers taken them when they departed? Had the lady cop regained possession of them? Where was the lady cop, and what was her real name? Again no answer.