It was deep blue dusk when Angela went back to her stateroom, too dark to look out of the window; yet she had lost interest in the book which she had found absorbing earlier in the day.  It seemed irrelevant somehow; and though there was no reason why they should do so, her own affairs appeared more insistently exciting than before.  “It’s the call of the West already,” she answered her own question.  “I hear the voice of my father’s country.”

And then her thoughts returned to Nick.

“I wonder what he is doing now—­whether I made him see the error of his ways?” she asked herself, stroking Timmy, lent by Kate.  And she was not sorry for the forest creature:  not sorry at all.  It was stupid even to think of him.  But in her lap, a splendid plaything for the black cat, was the gold bag.  It seemed associated with Mr. Hilliard now.  Odd, how different it looked since she had got it back!  Bigger, somehow, though, of course, it was the same.  There couldn’t have been a mistake.  Almost mechanically she began to count the jewels set along the mouth of the bag.  Fifteen sapphires—­fifteen diamonds.  Why, there had been only twenty-eight altogether!  She was sure of that.  She had counted them before, in absent-minded moments.  What could this mean?  Suddenly an explanation of what it might mean flashed into her head.  The theory seemed too elaborate—­yet it would account for the mystery Hilliard had made of the whole matter, and his anxiety that she should not interview the police, or come into contact with them.  And the five hundred dollars—­more money than ought to have been in the bag.  She recalled now having mentioned that sum in telling of her loss.  And the forest creature had said that he “knew exactly what her bag was like.”  If he had found a duplicate, and palmed it off upon her, the absence of the check-book and the presence of the money without the purse would be explained.  But could he have found a bag, ready-made, so like the lost one as to deceive her until now?  She must question him at once.  Yet, with her finger on the bell, ready to summon the porter, she paused.  Only half an hour ago she had forbidden Mr. Hilliard to come near her.  Now she was about to send for him.  This would appear to be a triumph for the enemy.  “But I’ll soon show him it isn’t a triumph,” she thought, and pushed the electric button.

“In the car between this and the dining-car, there’s a Mr. Hilliard,” she announced when the porter arrived.  “Please ask him to come and speak to Mrs. May.”

“Yes, miss, I’ll tell the gen’leman with pleasure,” replied the elderly negro, trotting off to cry aloud a name more or less resembling Hilliard.

Nick, not daring to hope that luck might change so soon, had drifted into the observation car; but a man answered to the call, beckoning the porter.

“Sure you understood the name right, George?” he inquired.  “My name’s Millard.  What kind of a looking lady is this Mrs. May?”