He was certain of it now, as every incident connected with her strange sickness came back to him, when she seemed to be doing penance for another's fault.

She had called herself an accessory, and that was what she was, or rather what the world would call her, if it knew.

To him she was Jerrie, the girl he loved, and he would defend her to the bitter end, no matter how culpable she had been in keeping silence so long.
But who took them! That was the question puzzling him so much as he sat thinking with his head bent down, and so absorbed that he did not hear a step in the adjoining room, or know that Peterkin had seated himself just where a large mirror showed him distinctly the young man in the next room, whom he recognized at once, though Harold never moved for a few moments or lifted his head.
At last, however, he unbuttoned his coat and after glancing cautiously around to make sure no one was near, he took the box from his pocket, and holding the stones to the light examined them carefully, taking in his hand first the ear-rings and then the pin, and holding them in such a way that two or three times they flashed directly in the eyes of the cruel man watching him.
'Yes, they are Mrs.Tracy's diamonds; there can be no mistake,' he whispered, just as he became conscious that there was some one in the door looking at him.
Quick as thought he put the box out of sight just as Peterkin's voice, exultant and hateful, cried out: 'Hallo, Mr.Prayer-book! your piety won't let you keep back a darned thing you know agin me, but it lets you have in your possession diamonds which I'd eenamost sware was them stones Miss Tracy lost years ago and suspected you of takin.

I know the box anyway, I heard it described so often, and I b'lieve I know them diamonds.

I seen 'em in the lookin'-glass, settin' in t'other room, and seen you look all round like a thief afore you opened 'em.