"I am going to get you a cup of tea," she said.
Miss Tredgold made the tea herself; and when she brought it, and pushed back Pauline's tangled hair, she observed a narrow gold chain round her neck.
"Where did she get it?" thought the good lady. "Mysteries get worse. I know all about her little ornaments. She has been talking in a most unintelligible way. And where did she get that chain?"
Miss Tredgold's discoveries of that morning were not yet at an end; for by-and-by, when the servant brought in Pauline's dress which she had been drying by the kitchen fire, she held something in her hand.
"I found this in the young lady's pocket," she said. "I am afraid it is injured a good bit, but if you have it well rubbed up it may get all right again."
Miss Tredgold saw in the palm of the girl's hand her own much-valued and long-lost thimble. She gave a quick start, then controlled herself.
"You can put it down," she said. "I am glad it was not lost."
"It is a beautiful thimble," said the girl. "I am sure Johnson, the jeweller in the High Street, could put it right for you, miss."
"You had better leave the room now," replied Miss Tredgold. "The young lady will hear you if you talk in a whisper."
When the maid had gone Miss Tredgold remained for a minute or two holding the thimble in the palm of her hand; then she crossed the room on tiptoe, and replaced it in the pocket of Pauline's serge skirt.
For the whole of that day Pauline lay in a languid and dangerous condition. The doctor feared mischief to the brain. Miss Tredgold waited on her day and night. At the end of the third day there was a change for the better, and then convalescence quickly followed.
Mr. Dale made his appearance on the scene early on the morning after the accident. He was very much perturbed, and very nearly shed tears when he clasped Penelope in his arms. But in an hour's time he got restless, and asked Verena in a fretful tone what he had left his employment for. She gave him a fresh account of the whole story as far as she knew it, and he once more remembered and asked to see Pauline, and actually dropped a tear on her forehead. But by the midday train he returned to The Dales, and long before he got there the whole affair in the White Bay was forgotten by him.