"My dear--!" I was too amazed to expostulate.

"We've got a--a pestilence among us," she declared, her foot tapping the
ground angrily, "and the least we can do is to go into quarantine. Oh, I'm
so sorry and so ashamed! The poor bishop! I'll take good care that no one
else shall meet that woman here. You did your best for me, Uncle Paul, and
managed admirably, but it was all no use. I hoped against hope that what
between the dusk of the drawing-room before dinner, and being put at
opposite ends of the table, we might get through without a meeting--"

"But, my dear, explain. Why shouldn't the bishop and Lady Carwitchet meet?
Why is it worse for him than anyone else?"

"Why? I thought everybody had heard of that dreadful wife of his who
nearly broke his heart. If he married her for her money it served him
right, but Lady Landor says she was very handsome and really in love with
him at first. Then Lady Carwitchet got hold of her and led her into all
sorts of mischief. She left her husband--he was only a rector with a
country living in those days--and went to live in town, got into a horrid
fast set, and made herself notorious. You _must_ have heard of her."

"I heard of her sapphires, my dear. But I was in Brazil at the time."

"I wish you had been at home. You might have found her out. She was
furious because her husband refused to let her wear the great Valdez
sapphire. It had been in the Montanaro family for some generations, and
her father settled it first on her and then on her little girl--the bishop
being trustee. He felt obliged to take away the little girl, and send her
off to be brought up by some old aunts in the country, and he locked up
the sapphire. Lady Carwitchet tells as a splendid joke how they got the
copy made in Paris, and it did just as well for the people to stare at. No
wonder the bishop hates the very name of the stone."

"How long will she stay here?" I asked dismally.

"Till Lord Carwitchet can come and escort her to Paris to visit some
American friends. Goodness knows when that will be! Do go up to town,
Uncle Paul!"

I refused indignantly. The very least I could do was to stand by my poor
young relatives in their troubles and help them through. I did so. I wore
that inferior cat's eye for six weeks!

It is a time I cannot think of even now without a shudder. The more I saw
of that terrible old woman the more I detested her, and we saw a very
great deal of her. Leta kept her word, and neither accepted nor gave
invitations all that time. We were cut off from all society but that of
old General Fairford, who would go anywhere and meet anyone to get a
rubber after dinner; the doctor, a sporting widower; and the Duberlys, a
giddy, rather rackety young, couple who had taken the Dower House for a
year. Lady Carwitchet seemed perfectly content. She reveled in the soft
living and good fare of the Manor House, the drives in Leta's big
barouche, and Domenico's dinners, as one to whom short commons were not
unknown. She had a hungry way of grabbing and grasping at everything she
could--the shillings she won at whist, the best fruit at dessert, the
postage stamps in the library inkstand--that was infinitely suggestive.
Sometimes I could have pitied her, she was so greedy, so spiteful, so
friendless. She always made me think of some wicked old pirate putting
into a peaceful port to provision and repair his battered old hulk,
obliged to live on friendly terms with the natives, but his piratical old
nostrils asniff for plunder and his piratical old soul longing to be off
marauding once more. When would that be? Not till the arrival in Paris of
her distinguished American friends, of whom we heard a great deal.
"Charming people, the Bokums of Chicago, the American branch of the
English Beauchamps, you know!" They seemed to be taking an unconscionable
time to get there. She would have insisted on being driven over to
Northchurch to call at the palace, but that the bishop was understood to
be holding confirmations at the other end of the diocese.

I was alone in the house one afternoon sitting by my window, toying with
the key of my safe, and wondering whether I dare treat myself to a peep at
my treasures, when a suspicious movement in the park below caught my
attention. A black figure certainly dodged from behind one tree to the
next, and then into the shadow of the park paling instead of keeping to
the footpath. It looked queer. I caught up my field glass and marked him
at one point where he was bound to come into the open for a few steps. He
crossed the strip of turf with giant strides and got into cover again, but
not quick enough to prevent me recognizing him. It was--great
heavens!--the bishop! In a soft hat pulled over his forehead, with a long
cloak and a big stick, he looked like a poacher.

Guided by some mysterious instinct I hurried to meet him. I opened the
conservatory door, and in he rushed like a hunted rabbit. Without
explanation I led him up the wide staircase to my room, where he dropped
into a chair and wiped his face.

"You are astonished, Mr. Acton," he panted. "I will explain directly.
Thanks." He tossed off the glass of brandy I had poured out without
waiting for the qualifying soda, and looked better.

"I am in serious trouble. You can help me. I've had a shock to-day--a
grievous shock." He stopped and tried to pull himself together. "I must
trust you implicitly, Mr. Acton, I have no choice. Tell me what you think
of this." He drew a case from his breast pocket and opened it. "I promised
you should see the Valdez sapphire. Look there!"

The Valdez sapphire! A great big shining lump of blue crystal--flawless
and of perfect color--that was all. I took it up, breathed on it, drew out
my magnifier, looked at it in one light and another. What was wrong with
it? I could not say. Nine experts out of ten would undoubtedly have
pronounced the stone genuine. I, by virtue of some mysterious instinct
that has hitherto always guided me aright, was the unlucky tenth. I looked
at the bishop. His eyes met mine. There was no need of spoken word
between us.

"Has Lady Carwitchet shown you her sapphire?" was his most unexpected
question. "She has? Now, Mr. Acton, on your honor as a connoisseur and a
gentleman, which of the two is the Valdez?"

"Not this one." I could say naught else.

"You were my last hope." He broke off, and dropped his face on his folded
arms with a groan that shook the table on which he rested, while I stood
dismayed at myself for having let so hasty a judgment escape me. He lifted
a ghastly countenance to me. "She vowed she would see me ruined and
disgraced. I made her my enemy by crossing some of her schemes once, and
she never forgives. She will keep her word. I shall appear before the
world as a fraudulent trustee. I can neither produce the valuable confided
to my charge nor make the loss good. I have only an incredible story to
tell," he dropped his head and groaned again. "Who will believe me?"

"I will, for one."

"Ah, you? Yes, you know her. She took my wife from me, Mr. Acton. Heaven
only knows what the hold was that she had over poor Mira. She encouraged
her to set me at defiance and eventually to leave me. She was answerable
for all the scandalous folly and extravagance of poor Mira's life in
Paris--spare me the telling of the story. She left her at last to die
alone and uncared for. I reached my wife to find her dying of a fever from
which Lady Carwitchet and her crew had fled. She was raving in delirium,
and died without recognizing me. Some trouble she had been in which I must
never know oppressed her. At the very last she roused from a long stupor
and spoke to the nurse. 'Tell him to get the sapphire back--she stole it.
She has robbed my child.' Those were her last words. The nurse understood
no English, and treated them as wandering; but _I_ heard them, and knew
she was sane when she spoke."

"What did you do?"

"What could I? I saw Lady Carwitchet, who laughed at me, and defied me to
make her confess or disgorge. I took the pendant to more than one eminent
jeweler on pretense of having the setting seen to, and all have examined
and admired without giving a hint of there being anything wrong. I allowed
a celebrated mineralogist to see it; he gave no sign--"

"Perhaps they are right and we are wrong."

"No, no. Listen. I heard of an old Dutchman celebrated for his imitations.
I went to him, and he told me at once that he had been allowed by
Montanaro to copy the Valdez--setting and all--for the Paris Exhibition. I
showed him this, and he claimed it for his own work at once, and pointed
out his private mark upon it. You must take your magnifier to find it; a
Greek Beta. He also told me that he had sold it to Lady Carwitchet more
than a year ago."

"It is a terrible position."

"It is. My co-trustee died lately. I have never dared to have another
appointed. I am bound to hand over the sapphire to my daughter on her
marriage, if her husband consents to take the name of Montanaro."

The bishop's face was ghastly pale, and the moisture started on his brow.
I racked my brain for some word of comfort.

"Miss Panton may never marry."

"But she will!" he shouted. "That is the blow that has been dealt me
to-day. My chaplain--actually, my chaplain--tells me that he is going out
as a temperance missionary to equatorial Africa, and has the assurance to
add that he believes my daughter is not indisposed to accompany him!" His
consummating wrath acted as a momentary stimulant. He sat upright, his
eyes flashing and his brow thunderous. I felt for that chaplain. Then he
collapsed miserably. "The sapphires will have to be produced, identified,
revalued. How shall I come out of it? Think of the disgrace, the ripping
up of old scandals! Even if I were to compound with Lady Carwitchet, the
sum she hinted at was too monstrous. She wants more than my money. Help
me, Mr. Acton! For the sake of your own family interests, help me!"

"I beg your pardon--family interests? I don't understand."

"If my daughter is childless, her next of kin is poor Marmaduke Panton,
who is dying at Cannes, not married, or likely to marry; and failing him,
your nephew, Sir Thomas Acton, succeeds."

My nephew Tom! Leta, or Leta's baby, might come to be the possible
inheritor of the great Valdez sapphire! The blood rushed to my head as I
looked at the great shining swindle before me. "What diabolic jugglery was
at work when the exchange was made?" I demanded fiercely.

"It must have been on the last occasion of her wearing the sapphires in
London. I ought never to have let her out of my sight."

"You must put a stop to Miss Panton's marriage in the first place," I
pronounced as autocratically as he could have done himself.

"Not to be thought of," he admitted helplessly. "Mira has my force of
character. She knows her rights, and she will have her jewels. I want you
to take charge of the--thing for me. If it's in the house she'll make me
produce it. She'll inquire at the banker's. If _you_ have it we can gain
time, if but for a day or two." He broke off. Carriage wheels were
crashing on the gravel outside. We looked at one another in consternation.
Flight was imperative. I hurried him downstairs and out of the
conservatory just as the door bell rang. I think we both lost our heads in
the confusion. He shoved the case into my hands, and I pocketed it,
without a thought of the awful responsibility I was incurring, and saw him
disappear into the shelter of the friendly night.

When I think of what my feelings were that evening--of my murderous hatred
of that smirking, jesting Jezebel who sat opposite me at dinner, my
wrathful indignation at the thought of the poor little expected heir
defrauded ere his birth; of the crushing contempt I felt for myself and
the bishop as a pair of witless idiots unable to see our way out of the
dilemma; all this boiling and surging through my soul, I can only
wonder--Domenico having given himself a holiday, and the kitchen maid
doing her worst and wickedest--that gout or jaundice did not put an end to
this story at once.

"Uncle Paul!" Leta was looking her sweetest when she tripped into my room
next morning. "I've news for you. She," pointing a delicate forefinger in
the direction of the corridor, "is going! Her Bokums have reached Paris at
last, and sent for her to join them at the Grand Hotel."

I was thunderstruck. The longed-for deliverance had but come to remove
hopelessly and forever out of my reach Lady Carwitchet and the great
Valdez sapphire.

"Why, aren't you overjoyed? I am. We are going to celebrate the event by a
dinner party. Tom's hospitable soul is vexed by the lack of entertainment
we had provided her. We must ask the Brownleys some day or other, and they
will be delighted to meet anything in the way of a ladyship, or such smart
folks as the Duberly-Parkers. Then we may as well have the Blomfields, and
air that awful modern SГЁvres dessert service she gave us when we were
married." I had no objection to make, and she went on, rubbing her soft
cheek against my shoulder like the purring little cat she was: "Now I want
you to do something to please me--and Mrs. Blomfield. She has set her
heart on seeing your rubies, and though I know you hate her about as much
as you do that SГЁvres china--"

"What! Wear my rubies with that! I won't. I'll tell you what I will do,
though. I've got some carbuncles as big as prize gooseberries, a whole
set. Then you have only to put those Bohemian glass vases and candelabra
on the table, and let your gardener do his worst with his great forced,
scentless, vulgar blooms, and we shall all be in keeping." Leta pouted. An
idea struck me. "Or I'll do as you wish, on one condition. You get Lady
Carwitchet to wear her big sapphire, and don't tell her I wish it."

I lived through the next few days as one in some evil dream. The
sapphires, like twin specters, haunted me day and night. Was ever man so
tantalized? To hold the shadow and see the substance dangled temptingly
within reach. The bishop made no sign of ridding me of my unwelcome
charge, and the thought of what might happen in a case of
burglary--fire--earthquake--made me start and tremble at all sorts of
inopportune moments.

I kept faith with Leta, and reluctantly produced my beautiful rubies on
the night of her dinner party. Emerging from my room I came full upon Lady
Carwitchet in the corridor. She was dressed for dinner, and at her throat
I caught the blue gleam of the great sapphire. Leta had kept faith with
me. I don't know what I stammered in reply to her ladyship's remarks; my
whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of the intoxicating
loveliness of the gem. _That_ a Palais Royal deception! Incredible! My
fingers twitched, my breath came short and fierce with the lust of
possession. She must have seen the covetous glare in my eyes. A look of
gratified spiteful complacency overspread her features, as she swept on
ahead and descended the stairs before me. I followed her to the
drawing-room door. She stopped suddenly, and murmuring something
unintelligible hurried back again.

Everybody was assembled there that I expected to see, with an addition.
Not a welcome one by the look on Tom's face. He stood on the hearthrug
conversing with a great hulking, high-shouldered fellow, sallow-faced,
with a heavy mustache and drooping eyelids, from the corners of which
flashed out a sudden suspicious look as I approached, which lighted up
into a greedy one as it rested on my rubies, and seemed unaccountably
familiar to me, till Lady Carwitchet tripping past me exclaimed:

"He has come at last! My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is my son,
Lord Carwitchet!"

I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to stare
blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross, with a Scotch
pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration.

"I had to put my pendant away," she explained confidentially; "the clasp
had got broken somehow." I didn't believe a word.

Lord Carwitchet contributed little to the general entertainment at dinner,
but fell into confidential talk with Mrs. Duberly-Parker. I caught a few
unintelligible remarks across the table. They referred, I subsequently
discovered, to the lady's little book on Northchurch races, and I
recollected that the Spring Meeting was on, and to-morrow "Cup Day." After
dinner there was great talk about getting up a party to go on General
Fairford's drag. Lady Carwitchet was in ecstasies and tried to coax me
into joining. Leta declined positively. Tom accepted sulkily.

The look in Lord Carwitchet's eye returned to my mind as I locked up my
rubies that night. It made him look so like his mother! I went round my
fastenings with unusual care. Safe and closets and desk and doors, I tried
them all. Coming at last to the bathroom, it opened at once. It was the
housemaid's doing. She had evidently taken advantage of my having
abandoned the room to give it "a thorough spring cleaning," and I
anathematized her. The furniture was all piled together and veiled with
sheets, the carpet and felt curtain were gone, there were new brooms
about. As I peered around, a voice close at my ear made me jump--Lady
Carwitchet's!

"I tell you I have nothing, not a penny! I shall have to borrow my train
fare before I can leave this. They'll be glad enough to lend it."

Not only had the _portiГЁre_ been removed, but the door behind it had been
unlocked and left open for convenience of dusting behind the wardrobe. I
might as well have been in the bedroom.

"Don't tell me," I recognized Carwitchet's growl. "You've not been here
all this time for nothing. You've been collecting for a Kilburn cot or
getting subscriptions for the distressed Irish landlords. I know you. Now
I'm not going to see myself ruined for the want of a paltry hundred or so.
I tell you the colt is a dead certainty. If I could have got a thousand or
two on him last week, we might have ended our dog days millionaires. Hand
over what you can. You've money's worth, if not money. Where's that
sapphire you stole?"

"I didn't. I can show you the receipted bill. All _I_ possess is honestly
come by. What could you do with it, even if I gave it you? You couldn't
sell it as the Valdez, and you can't get it cut up as you might if it were
real."

"If it's only bogus, why are you always in such a flutter about it? I'll
do something with it, never fear. Hand over."

"I can't. I haven't got it. I had to raise something on it before I left
town."

"Will you swear it's not in that wardrobe? I dare say you will. I mean to
see. Give me those keys."

I heard a struggle and a jingle, then the wardrobe door must have been
flung open, for a streak of light struck through a crack in the wood of
the back. Creeping close and peeping through, I could see an awful sight.
Lady Carwitchet in a flannel wrapper, minus hair, teeth, complexion,
pointing a skinny forefinger that quivered with rage at her son, who was
out of the range of my vision.

"Stop that, and throw those keys down here directly, or I'll rouse the
house. Sir Thomas is a magistrate, and will lock you up as soon as look at
you." She clutched at the bell rope as she spoke. "I'll swear I'm in
danger of my life from you and give you in charge. Yes, and when you're in
prison I'll keep you there till you die. I've often thought I'd do it. How
about the hotel robberies last summer at Cowes, eh? Mightn't the police be
grateful for a hint or two? And how about--"

The keys fell with a crash on the bed, accompanied by some bad language in
an apologetic tone, and the door slammed to. I crept trembling to bed.

This new and horrible complication of the situation filled me with
dismay. Lord Carwitchet's wolfish glance at my rubies took a new meaning.
They were safe enough, I believed--but the sapphire! If he disbelieved his
mother, how long would she be able to keep it from his clutches? That she
had some plot of her own of which the bishop would eventually be the
victim I did not doubt, or why had she not made her bargain with him long
ago? But supposing she took fright, lost her head, allowed her son to
wrest the jewel from her, or gave consent to its being mutilated, divided!
I lay in a cold perspiration till morning.

My terrors haunted me all day. They were with me at breakfast time when
Lady Carwitchet, tripping in smiling, made a last attempt to induce me to
accompany her and keep her "bad, bad boy" from getting among "those horrid
betting men."

They haunted me through the long peaceful day with Leta and the
_tГЄte-Г -tГЄte_ dinner, but they swarmed around and beset me sorest when,
sitting alone over my sitting-room fire, I listened for the return of the
drag party. I read my newspaper and brewed myself some hot strong drink,
but there comes a time of night when no fire can warm and no drink can
cheer. The bishop's despairing face kept me company, and his troubles and
the wrongs of the future heir took possession of me. Then the uncanny
noises that make all old houses ghostly during the small hours began to
make themselves heard. Muffled footsteps trod the corridor, stopping to
listen at every door, door latches gently clicked, boards creaked
unreasonably, sounds of stealthy movements came from the locked-up
bathroom. The welcome crash of wheels at last, and the sound of the
front-door bell. I could hear Lady Carwitchet making her shrill _adieux_
to her friends and her steps in the corridor. She was softly humming a
little song as she approached. I heard her unlock her bedroom door before
she entered--an odd thing to do. Tom came sleepily stumbling to his room
later. I put my head out. "Where is Lord Carwitchet?"

"Haven't you seen him? He left us hours ago. Not come home, eh? Well,
he's welcome to stay away. I don't want to see more of him." Tom's brow
was dark and his voice surly. "I gave him to understand as much." Whatever
had happened, Tom was evidently too disgusted to explain just then.

I went back to my fire unaccountably relieved, and brewed myself another
and a stronger brew. It warmed me this time, but excited me foolishly.
There must be some way out of the difficulty. I felt now as if I could
almost see it if I gave my mind to it. Why--suppose--there might be no
difficulty after all! The bishop was a nervous old gentleman. He might
have been mistaken all through, Bogaerts might have been mistaken, I
might--no. I could not have been mistaken--or I thought not. I fidgeted
and fumed and argued with myself till I found I should have no peace of
mind without a look at the stone in my possession, and I actually went to
the safe and took the case out.

The sapphire certainly looked different by lamplight. I sat and stared,
and all but overpersuaded my better judgment into giving it a verdict.
Bogaerts's mark--I suddenly remembered it. I took my magnifier and held
the pendant to the light. There, scratched upon the stone, was the Greek
Beta! There came a tap on my door, and before I could answer, the handle
turned softly and Lord Carwitchet stood before me. I whipped the case into
my dressing-gown pocket and stared at him. He was not pleasant to look at,
especially at that time of night. He had a disheveled, desperate air, his
voice was hoarse, his red-rimmed eyes wild.

"I beg your pardon," he began civilly enough. "I saw your light burning,
and thought, as we go by the early train to-morrow, you might allow me to
consult you now on a little business of my mother's." His eyes roved about
the room. Was he trying to find the whereabouts of my safe? "You know a
lot about precious stones, don't you?"

"So my friends are kind enough to say. Won't you sit down? I have
unluckily little chance of indulging the taste on my own account," was my
cautious reply.

"But you've written a book about them, and know them when you see them,
don't you? Now my mother has given me something, and would like you to
give a guess at its value. Perhaps you can put me in the way of disposing
of it?"

"I certainly can do so if it is worth anything. Is that it?" I was in a
fever of excitement, for I guessed what was clutched in his palm. He held
out to me the Valdez sapphire.

How it shone and sparkled like a great blue star! I made myself a
deprecating smile as I took it from him, but how dare I call it false to
its face? As well accuse the sun in heaven of being a cheap imitation. I
faltered and prevaricated feebly. Where was my moral courage, and where
was the good, honest, thumping lie that should have aided me? "I have the
best authority for recognizing this as a very good copy of a famous stone
in the possession of the Bishop of Northchurch." His scowl grew so black
that I saw he believed me, and I went on more cheerily: "This was
manufactured by Johannes Bogaerts--I can give you his address, and you can
make inquiries yourself--by special permission of the then owner, the late
Leone Montanaro."

"Hand it back!" he interrupted (his other remarks were outrageous, but
satisfactory to hear); but I waved him off. I couldn't give it up. It
fascinated me. I toyed with it, I caressed it. I made it display its
different tones of color. I must see the two stones together. I must see
it outshine its paltry rival. It was a whimsical frenzy that seized me--I
can call it by no other name.

"Would you like to see the original? Curiously enough, I have it here. The
bishop has left it in my charge."

The wolfish light flamed up in Carwitchet's eyes as I drew forth the case.
He laid the Valdez down on a sheet of paper, and I placed the other, still
in its case, beside it. In that moment they looked identical, except for
the little loop of sham stones, replaced by a plain gold band in the
bishop's jewel. Carwitchet leaned across the table eagerly, the table gave
a lurch, the lamp tottered, crashed over, and we were left in
semidarkness.

"Don't stir!" Carwitchet shouted. "The paraffin is all over the place!" He
seized my sofa blanket, and flung it over the table while I stood
helpless. "There, that's safe now. Have you candles on the chimney-piece?
I've got matches."

He looked very white and excited as he lit up. "Might have been an awkward
job with all that burning paraffin, running about," he said quite
pleasantly. "I hope no real harm is done." I was lifting the rug with
shaking hands. The two stones lay as I had placed them. No! I nearly
dropped it back again. It was the stone in the case that had the loop with
the three sham sapphires!

Carwitchet picked the other up hastily. "So you say this is rubbish?" he
asked, his eyes sparkling wickedly, and an attempt at mortification in his
tone.

"Utter rubbish!" I pronounced, with truth and decision, snapping up the
case and pocketing it. "Lady Carwitchet must have known it."

"Ah, well, it's disappointing, isn't it? Good-by, we shall not meet
again."

I shook hands with him most cordially. "Good-by, Lord Carwitchet. _So_
glad to have met you and your mother. It has been a source of the
_greatest_ pleasure, I assure you."

I have never seen the Carwitchets since. The bishop drove over next day in
rather better spirits. Miss Panton had refused the chaplain.

"It doesn't matter, my lord," I said to him heartily. "We've all been
under some strange misconception. The stone in your possession is the
veritable one. I could swear to that anywhere. The sapphire Lady
Carwitchet wears is only an excellent imitation, and--I have seen it with
my own eyes--is the one bearing Bogaerts's mark, the Greek Beta."



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