“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.”