he grating to the nun,
to settle her material needs.

"And, oh, madame," wailed the gardener's wife, "my poor little boy has
lost the gift of the Reverend Mother of San Surplice! His own cross
which has been blessed by his holiness the Pope! It is because I left
his cross in his little shirt that he is getting better, but now it is
lost and I am sure these thieving doctors have taken it."

"A cross?" said Lydia. "What sort of a cross?"

"It was a silver cross, madame; the value in money was nothing--it was
priceless. Little Xavier----"

"Xavier?" repeated Lydia, remembering the "X" on the trinket that had
been found in her bed. "Wait a moment, madame." She opened her bag and
took out the tiny silver symbol, and at the sight of it the woman burst
into a volley of joyful thanks.

"It is the same, the same, madame! It has a small 'X' which the Reverend
Mother scratched with her own blessed scissors!"

Lydia pushed the cross through the net and the nun handed it to the
woman.

"It is the same, it is the same!" she cried. "Oh, thank you, madame! Now
my heart is glad...."

Lydia came out of the hospital and walked through the gardens by the
doctor's side. But she was not listening to what he was saying--her mind
was fully occupied with the mystery of the silver cross.

It was little Xavier's ... it had been tucked inside his bed when he
lay, as his mother thought, dying ... and it had been found in her bed!
Then little Xavier had been in her bed! Her foot was on the step of the
car when it came to her--the meaning of that drenched couch and the
empty bottle of peroxide. Xavier had been put there, and somebody who
knew that the bed was infected had so soaked it with water that she
could not sleep in it. But who? Old Jaggs!

She got into the car slowly, and went back to Cap Martin along the
Grande Corniche.

Who had put the child there? He could not have walked from the cottage;
that was impossible.

She was half-way home when she noticed a parcel lying on the floor of
the car, and she let down the front window and spoke to the chauffeur.
It was not Mordon, but a man whom she had hired with the car.

"It came from the hospital, madame," he said. "The porter asked me if I
came from Villa Casa. It was something sent to the hospital to be
disinfected. There was a charge of seven francs for the service, madame,
and this I paid."

She nodded.

She picked up the parcel--it was addressed to "Mademoiselle Jean
Brig