n tempted to make one of them unfairly her own, and she seldom
purchased, for she never coveted one unless it was something quite
extraordinary, beyond the reach of even her considerable fortune.
Meanwhile few of the larger jewelry houses had in their employ
lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba. She pursued her studies for
the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics,
cameos, and intaglios. And yet the Crevecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser
heads than Mrs. Dalliba's, adept though she was. It was cut from a solid
heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure white, shading down through exquisite
gradations into deep green, and representing Aphrodite rising from the
sea; the white foam rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the
drops of spray from her hands and her wind-blown hair; the foamy waves
were beautifully cut with their intense hollows and snowy crests; it was
evidently the work of a cultivated as well as a natural artist; it was
not surprising that Mrs. Dalliba should insist that it could not have
been executed out of Italy.

But Prof. Stonehenge was right too; it was a stone of the chalcedonic
family, resembling sardonyx, except in color; others, similar to it both
in a natural state and wrought into arrow-heads, had been found along
the shores of Lake Superior. This seemed to have been brought away from
its associates by some wandering tribe, for it had been discovered in
Central Illinois. The nearest point at which other relics belonging to
the same period had been found was the site of Fort Crevecoeur, near
Starved Rock, Illinois. After all, the stone only differed from the
arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented
size--and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its
discovery. No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by
scientific research at Crevecoeur had been found with a gem for a
heart--a gem that glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped
with human bone. Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never felt
so strong a desire to possess and wear any jewel as now; but when Prof.
Stonehenge told how the uncanny thing rattled within the white ribs of
the skeleton in which it was found, she allowed the gem to slip from her
hand, while something of its own pale green flickered in the disgusted
expression which quivered about the corners of her mobile mouth. The
cameo was a mystery which had baffled geologist, antiq