“It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning,” Claridge said.  “I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never thought so close an imitation was possible.  I examined it most carefully, and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and were all equally deceived.  I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to exist.  It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway’s, and I was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever forgery.  It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor less.  But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary examination.  Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part of the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite beyond any of those.

“I was amazed and horrified.  I put the thing away and went home.  All that night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what to do.  To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible.  Sooner or later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation—­the highest in these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment—­this reputation would be gone forever.  But without considering this, there was the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway’s money for a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty as well as for my own sake, return.  But how?  The name of the Stanway Cameo had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing was a sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence—­past, present, and future—­in me and in my transactions.  Either way spelled ruin.  Even if I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money, and destroyed the cameo, what then?  The sudden disappearance of an article so famous would excite remark at once.  It had been presented to the British Museum, and if it never appeared in that collection, and no news were to be got of it, people would guess at the truth at once.  To make it known that I myself had been deceived would have availed nothing.  It is my business not to be deceived; and to have it known that my most expensive specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I sold them cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool.  Indeed, my pride, my reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would be an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been imposed on by such a forgery.  What could I do?  Every expedient seemed useless but one—­the one I adopted.  It was not straightforward, I admit;