She snapped the bag and smiled at the old woman carelessly. What a sweet surprise she would have tomorrow morning! Nance crossed slowly, glancing once at the girl wistfully as if she wanted to say something friendly, and then, alarmed at her presumption, hurried on into the little shed-room. Mary waited until she returned. “Room's all ready in thar, ma'am,” she drawled, passing into the kitchen without a pause. “All right--thank you,” Mary answered. She quickly opened the bag, thrust her hand into the gold and withdrew it, holding a costly green-leather jewelry-case of exquisite workmanship. There could be no mistake about its value. With a cry of joy, she started back, staring at the little box. “Another surprise! And for me! Oh, Jim, man, you're glorious! My Christmas present, of course! I mustn't look at it--I won't!” She pushed the case from her toward the bag and drew it back again. “What's the difference? I'll take one little, tiny peep.” She touched the spring and caught her breath. A string of pearls fit for the neck of a princess lay shining in its soft depths. She lifted them with a sigh of delight. Her eye suddenly rested on a stanza of poetry scrawled on the satin lining in the trembling hand of an old man she had known. She dropped the pearls with a cry of terror. Her face went white, and she gasped for breath. The jewel-case in her hand she had seen before. It had belonged to the old gentleman who lived in the front room on the first floor of her building in the days when it was a boarding house. The wife he had idolized was long ago dead. This string of pearls from her neck the old man had worshiped for years. The stanza from “The Rosary” he had scrawled in the lining one day in Mary's presence. He had moved uptown with the landlady. Two months ago a burglar had entered his room, robbed and shot him. “It's impossible--impossible!” she gasped. “Oh, dear God--it's impossible! Of course the burglar pawned them, and Jim bought them without knowing. Of course! My nerves are on edge today--how silly of me----” Jim's footsteps suddenly sounded on the porch, and she thrust the jewel-case back into the bag with desperate effort to pull herself together. CHAPTER XVI. THE AWAKENING For a moment she felt the foundations of the moral and physical world sinking beneath her feet. Dizziness swept her senses. She gripped the table, leaning heavily against it, her eye watching the door with feverish terror for Jim's appearance. She had never fainted in her life. It was absurd, but the room was swimming now in a dim blur. Again she gripped the table and set her teeth. She simply would not give up. Why should she leap to the worst possible explanation of the jewels? The hatred of old Ella for Jim and the furious antagonism of Jane Anderson had poisoned her mind, after all. It was infamous that she could suspect her husband of crime merely because two silly women didn't like him.