ustee. 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 jeweller 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."

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-