‘I shall never tell!’ she said to Arthur, ’and I shall go!  I can bear it better than you.  It is not that which makes my headache so.  It’s—­oh, Mr. Arthur, I thought you so good, and I am so sorry about the diamonds—­Mrs. Tracy was so proud of them.  Can’t you contrive to get them back to her?  I could, if you would let me.  I am thinking all the time how to do it, and never let her know, and the back of my head aches so when I think.’

Arthur could not guess what she really meant, except that the lost diamonds troubled her, and that she wished Mrs. Tracy to have them.  Occasionally his brows would knit together, and he seemed trying to recall something which perplexed him, and which her words had evidently suggested to his mind.

‘Cherry,’ he said to her one day when he came as usual, and her first eager question was, ‘Have they found them?’ ’Jerry, try and understand me.  Do you know where the diamonds are?’

Instantly into Jerry’s eyes there came a scared look, but she answered, unhesitatingly: 

‘Yes, don’t you?’

‘No,’ was the prompt reply; ’though it seems to me I did know, but there has been so much talk about them, and you are so sick, that everything has gone from my head, and the bees are stinging me frightfully.  Where are the diamonds?’

But by this time Jerry was in the prison, sleeping on a board and eating bread and mush, and Arthur failed to get any satisfaction from her.  Indeed, they were two crazy ones talking together, with little or no meaning in what they said.  Only this Arthur gathered—­that Jerry would be happy if ’Mrs. Tracy had her diamonds again and did not know how they came to her.  When this dawned upon him he laughed aloud, and kissing her hot cheek, said to her: 

’I see; I know, and I’ll do it.  Wait till I come again.

It was ten o’clock in the morning when he left Mrs. Crawford’s house; there was a train which passed the station at half-past ten, bound for New York, and without returning to the park, Arthur took the train, sending word to his brother not to expect him home until the next day, and not to be alarmed on his account, as he was going to New York and would take care of himself.

Why he had gone Frank could not guess, and he waited in much anxiety for his return.  It was evening when he came home, seeming perfectly composed and well, but giving no reason for his sudden journey to the city.  His first inquiry was for Jerry, and his second, if anything had been heard of the diamonds.  On being answered in the negative, he remarked: 

’Those rascally detectives are bunglers, and oftentimes would rather let the culprit escape than catch him.  I doubt if you ever see the jewels again.  But no matter; it will all come right.  Tell your wife not to fret,’

The next morning when Mrs. Tracy went to her room after breakfast she was astonished to find upon her dressing bureau a velvet box with Tiffany’s name upon it, and inside an exquisite set of diamonds; not as fine as those she had lost, or quite as large, but white, and clear, and sparkling as she took them in her hand with a cry of delight, and ran with them to her husband.  Both knew from whence they came, and both went at once to Arthur, who, to his sister-in-law’s profuse expressions of gratitude, replied indifferently: