“Superb!” was all I could ejaculate, staring at the azure splendor of that miraculous jewel in a sort of trance.

She gave a shrill cackling laugh of mockery.

“The great Mr. Acton taken in by a bit of Palais Royal gimcrackery!  What an advertisement for Bogaerts et Cie!  They are perfect artists in frauds.  Don’t you remember their stand at the first Paris Exhibition?  They had imitation there of every celebrated stone; but I never expected anything made by man could delude Mr. Acton, never!” And she went off into another mocking cackle, and all the idiots round her haw-hawed knowingly, as if they had seen the joke all along.  I was too bewildered to reply, which was on the whole lucky.  “I suppose I mustn’t tell why I came to give quite a big sum in francs for this?” she went on, tapping her closed lips with her closed fan, and cocking her eye at us all like a parrot wanting to be coaxed to talk.  “It’s a queer story.”

I didn’t want to hear her anecdote, especially as I saw she wanted to tell it.  What I did want was to see that pendant again.  She had thrust it back among her laces, only the loop which held it to the velvet being visible.  It was set with three small sapphires, and even from a distance I clearly made them out to be imitations, and poor ones.  I felt a queer thrill of self-mistrust.  Was the large stone no better?  Could I, even for an instant, have been dazzled by a sham, and a sham of that quality?  The events of the evening had flurried and confused me.  I wished to think them over in quiet.  I would go to bed.

My rooms at the Manor are the best in the house.  Leta will have it so.  I must explain their position for a reason to be understood later.  My bedroom is in the southeast angle of the house; it opens on one side into a sitting-room in the east corridor, the rest of which is taken up by the suite of rooms occupied by Tom and Leta; and on the other side into my bathroom, the first room in the south corridor, where the principal guest chambers are, to one of which it was originally the dressing-room.  Passing this room I noticed a couple of housemaids preparing it for the night, and discovered with a shiver that Lady Carwitchet was to be my next-door neighbor.  It gave me a turn.

The bishop’s strange warning must have unnerved me.  I was perfectly safe from her ladyship.  The disused door into her room was locked, and the key safe on the housekeeper’s bunch.  It was also undiscoverable on her side, the recess in which it stood being completely filled by a large wardrobe.  On my side hung a thick sound-proof portiere.  Nevertheless, I resolved not to use that room while she inhabited the next one.  I removed my possessions, fastened the door of communication with my bedroom, and dragged a heavy ottoman across it.

Then I stowed away my emerald in my strong-box.  It is built into the wall of my sitting-room, and masked by the lower part of an old carved oak bureau.  I put away even the rings I wore habitually, keeping out only an inferior cat’s-eye for workaday wear.  I had just made all safe when Leta tapped at the door and came in to wish me good night.  She looked flushed and harassed and ready to cry.  “Uncle Paul,” she began, “I want you to go up to town at once, and stay away till I send for you.”