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.