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.
'What is it?
What have you in your hand ?' he asked.
Then Jerrie's face, so pale before, flushed scarlet, and her eyes had in them a wild look which Harold construed into fear, as, without a word, she laid the box in his hand, and then stood watching him is he opened it.
Harold's face was whiter than Jerrie's had been, and his voice trembled as he said, in a whisper: 'Mrs.Tracy's diamonds!' 'Yes, Mrs.Tracy's diamonds,' Jerrie replied, with a marked emphasis on the _Mrs.Tracy_.
'How came you by them, and where did you find them,' Harold asked next, shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed like fiery eyes confronting him.
'I can't tell you now.

Put them up quick.

Don't let any one see them.
Somebody is coming,' Jerrie said, hurriedly, as her ear caught a sound and her eye an object which Harold neither saw nor heard as he mechanically thrust the box into his side pocket and then turned just as Tom Tracy came up on horseback.
'Hallo, Jerrie! hallo, Hal!' he cried, dismounting quickly and throwing the bridle-rein over his arm.

'And so you are off to that suit ?' he continued, addressing himself to Harold.

'By George, I wish I were a witness.