om and thought of the white-faced girl
lying there, died out, and it was more a Nemesis than a gentle,
forgiving woman who walked boldly into the hall and entered unbidden at
the drawing-room door.

Mrs. Tracy was having a progressive euchre party that afternoon. A
friend in Boston had written her about it, and, proud to be the first to
introduce it in Shannondale, she stood, flushed and triumphant, with the
restored diamonds in her ears and at her throat, laughing merrily with
the others at Judge St. Claire, who had won the booby prize--a little
drum, as something he could beat--and who, with a perplexed look in his
face, was staring at the thing as if he did not quite get the joke.

Apart from the rest, Frank Tracy sat looking on, though with no apparent
interest in the matter. He had joined in the game because his wife told
him he must, and had borne meekly her sarcastic remarks when he trumped
her ace and ordered up on nothing. His thoughts were not with the cards,
but up stairs with Maude, who seemed to be much better, and for whom
there was constantly a prayer in his heart.

'Spare her, and I will make reparation; I will tell the truth.'

He was trying to bribe the Lord to hear him, and there was some such
thought in his mind when he saw Jerrie in the door--tall, thin, and
white from her recent sickness, with eyes which rolled, and shone, and
flashed as Arthur's did sometimes, and falling at last upon Mrs. Tracy,
where they rested with an intensity which must have drawn that lady's
notice to her, if Frank had not exclaimed, as he rose to his feet:

'Jerrie! How did you get here?'

Then all turned and looked at her, and crowded around her with
exclamations of surprise and inquiries as to how she got there.

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--by whom, at first, I do not know, but it was helped on
by you. 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
ke