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 imitations 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 musn'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 neighbour. 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 poss