courtesy toward me and asked if a few family
details would bore me. I smiled and assured him to the contrary. At
which he settled himself in the chair he liked best and began a tale
which I will permit myself to present to you complete and from other
points of view than his own.

Some five years before, one of the great diamonds of the world was
offered for sale in an Eastern market. Mr. Grey, who stopped at no
expense in the gratification of his taste in this direction, immediately
sent his agent to Egypt to examine this stone. If the agent discovered
it to be all that was claimed for it, and within the reach of a wealthy
commoner's purse, he was to buy it. Upon inspection, it was found to be
all that was claimed, with one exception. In the center of one of the
facets was a flaw, but, as this was considered to mark the diamond, and
rather add to than detract from its value as a traditional stone with
many historical associations, it was finally purchased by Mr. Grey
and placed among his treasures in his manor-house in Kent. Never a
suspicious man, he took delight in exhibiting this acquisition to such
of his friends and acquaintances as were likely to feel any interest in
it, and it was not an uncommon thing for him to allow it to pass from
hand to hand while he pottered over his other treasures and displayed
this and that to such as had no eyes for the diamond.

It was after one such occasion that he found, on taking the stone in
his hand to replace it in the safe he had had built for it in one of
his cabinets, that it did not strike his eye with its usual force and
brilliancy, and, on examining it closely, he discovered the absence of
the telltale flaw. Struck with dismay, he submitted it to a still
more rigid inspection, when he found that what he held was not even a
diamond, but a worthless bit of glass, which had been substituted by
some cunning knave for his invaluable gem.

For the moment his humiliation almost equaled his sense of loss; he had
been so often warned of the danger he ran in letting so priceless an
object pass around under all eyes but his own. His wife and friends had
prophesied some such loss as this, not once, but many times, and he
had always laughed at their fears, saying that he knew his friends, and
there was not a scamp amongst them. But now he saw it proved that
even the intuition of a man well-versed in human nature is not always
infallible, and, ashamed of his past laxness and more as