Holding the papers in one hand and the bag in the other, she went on to the house, from which shouts of laughter were issuing, Nina’s voice, and Marian’s, and Tom’s, and Dick’s, and Mrs. Tracy’s.  Jerrie shuddered a little when she heard that, for it brought back to her mind all the slights she had received from that woman who was so cruel to Harold, and the pity which had been springing up in her heart ever since she looked up at the windows of Maude’s room 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 kept silent, and let you think what you would.’