‘You gave him the diamonds?’ Mrs. Tracy repeated, as one by one all the members of the party, even the judge and Tom, gathered close to her in their astonishment.  ’You gave him the diamonds!  You! and have come to confess yourself a—­’

She never finished the sentence, for something in Jerrie’s face frightened her, while her husband, who had come forward, laid his hand warningly upon her arm.

So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little white-robed girl, who, they supposed, was lying up stairs in her room, but who at the sound of Jerrie’s voice had, in her eagerness to see her, crept down the stairs, and now stood in the door-way opposite to Jerrie, her large, bright eyes looking in wonder upon the scene, and her ears listening intently to what was as new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.

‘Don’t give me the name you have more than once given to Harold,’ Jerrie said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy.  ’The diamonds are mine, not yours.  Can one steal his own?’

‘Yours!  Your diamonds!  What do you mean?’ Mrs. Tracy asked.

‘They were my mother’s,’ Jerrie replied, ‘and she sent them to me.’

They all thought her crazy except Frank, to whom there had come a horrid presentiment of the truth, and who had clutched hard his wife’s arm as she said questioningly, in a mocking, aggravating tone: 

‘And your mother was—?’

Then Jerrie stepped into the room, and stood in their midst like a queen among her subjects as she answered: 

’My mother was Marguerite Heinrich, of Wiesbaden, better known to you as Gretchen; and my father is Arthur Tracy, and I am their lawful child.  It is so written here,’ and she held up the papers and the bag; ’I am Jerrie Tracy!’

CHAPTER XLV.

WHAT FOLLOWED.

‘Thank God that it is out!  I couldn’t have borne it much longer,’ leaped involuntarily from Frank’s lips.

No one heard it save Jerrie, and she scarcely heeded it then; for with one bound, as it seemed to the petrified spectators, who divided right and left to let her pass, she reached the opposite door-way, and stooping over the little figure lying there so still, lifted it tenderly, and carrying it up stairs, laid it down in the room it would never leave again until other hands than hers carried it out and laid it away in the Tracy lot, where only Jack and the dark woman were lying now.

Maude had heard all Jerrie was saying, and understood it, too; and at the words, ‘I am Jerrie Tracy,’ she felt an electric thrill pass over her, like what she had experienced when watching the acting in some great tragedy; then all was darkness, and she knew no more until Jerrie was bending over her and she heard her mother saying: 

’Leave her to me, Miss Crawford.  You have done harm enough for one day.  You have killed my daughter!’

‘No!’ Maude cried, exerting all her strength.  ’She has not hurt me.  She must not go, I want her; for if what she said is true, she is my own cousin.  Oh, Jerrie, I am so glad!’ and throwing her arms around Jerrie’s neck, Maude sobbed convulsively.