n her face, insensible to everything.

How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she came back to
consciousness the sunlight had changed its position in the room, and she
felt it was growing late.

Starting suddenly up, and wiping from her face a drop of blood which has
oozed from a cut in her forehead caused by her striking it against some
hard substance when she fell, she looked about her for a moment in a
bewildered kind of way, not realizing at first what had happened; and
even when she remembered, she was too much stunned and astonished to
take it all in as she would afterward when she was calmer and could
think more clearer.

Taking up the papers one by one, in the order in which she had found
them, she tied them again with the blue ribbon, and put them into the
bag.

'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 yo