He offered his hand to Mr. Hilton, who took and held it a moment, but said nothing. He was still shifting the blame to some extent upon Tom’s shoulders and cursing himself for having been so weak as to be led by him. Releasing Mark’s hand, Tom began walking across the piazza with his hands in his pockets, when he touched something hard and started as if a serpent had stung him. “By George, I had forgotten this in my excitement,” he said, taking out a small linen bag and laying it upon the table which stood upon the piazza. “See,” he continued, taking out the diamonds Fanny had guarded so carefully. In an instant Mr. Hilton was on his feet and facing Tom threateningly. “Tom, you villain!” he exclaimed, “you robbed her after all, and have been prating to me of a new life and Sunday School lessons learned in Ridgefield. You hypocrite, I could strike you dead, if it were not for adding murder to my other crimes! Why did you do it, and how?” Tom could not resent Mark’s anger, and could scarcely speak aloud as he replied. “I don’t know why I did it. When I picked up her hat and straightened it and felt the stones something I could not resist made me take them. My fingers tingled as they used to do in Ridgefield when I picked pockets for fun. A legion of devils were urging me on and all the while I was saying to myself ‘I shall get them back to her somehow,’ and I will. They must be very valuable.” He held up the ear-rings which glowed and sparkled in the sunlight, emitting sparks of color which played upon Mark’s face, which was ghastly now with a cold sweat standing upon it and a look of terror in his eyes. Surely he had seen those jewels before,—so large, so white, so clear, and pear shaped, with the old fashioned setting which Helen would never have changed. He could not be mistaken. He had seen them too often and clasped them in Helen’s ears too many times not to know them now. “Tom,” he said in a whisper, for his throat seemed closing up. “Tom, these are the Tracy diamonds,—my wife’s diamonds. Don’t you remember them?” Tom had been too young when he left Mrs. Hilton to know much about her jewelry. It came back to him now, however, that her ear-rings were very large and of a peculiar shape. These might be the same, and if so how came Fanny Prescott by them? He put the question to Mark, who did not answer. The conviction that he had Helen Tracy’s diamonds was strengthening every moment, and if so _who_ was Fanny Prescott? Something like half the truth began to dawn upon him, making him so faint that the ear-rings dropped from his hands and he sat down gasping for breath. That Helen had married again and that Fanny was her daughter he suspected, but not that she was his. That little child was dead. He saw it in the paper. This girl was Helen’s. Helen had been near him,—in the valley,—past his house,—and he had not known it. He did not care for her, he thought, but he did care for her daughter, if the girl were her daughter.