s.

I kept faith with Leta, and reluctantly produced my beautiful rubies on
the night of her dinner party. Emerging from my room I came full upon Lady
Carwitchet in the corridor. She was dressed for dinner, and at her throat
I caught the blue gleam of the great sapphire. Leta had kept faith with
me. I don't know what I stammered in reply to her ladyship's remarks; my
whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of the intoxicating
loveliness of the gem. _That_ a Palais Royal deception! Incredible! My
fingers twitched, my breath came short and fierce with the lust of
possession. She must have seen the covetous glare in my eyes. A look of
gratified spiteful complacency overspread her features, as she swept on
ahead and descended the stairs before me. I followed her to the
drawing-room door. She stopped suddenly, and murmuring something
unintelligible hurried back again.

Everybody was assembled there that I expected to see, with an addition.
Not a welcome one by the look on Tom's face. He stood on the hearthrug
conversing with a great hulking, high-shouldered fellow, sallow-faced,
with a heavy mustache and drooping eyelids, from the corners of which
flashed out a sudden suspicious look as I approached, which lighted up
into a greedy one as it rested on my rubies, and seemed unaccountably
familiar to me, till Lady Carwitchet tripping past me exclaimed:

"He has come at last! My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is my son,
Lord Carwitchet!"

I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to stare
blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross, with a Scotch
pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration.

"I had to put my pendant away," she explained confidentially; "the clasp
had got broken somehow." I didn't believe a word.

Lord Carwitchet contributed little to the general entertainment at dinner,
but fell into confidential talk with Mrs. Duberly-Parker. I caught a few
unintelligible remarks across the table. They referred, I subsequently
discovered, to the lady's little book on Northchurch races, and I
recollected that the Spring Meeting was on, and to-morrow "Cup Day." After
dinner there was great talk about getting up a party to go on General
Fairford's drag. Lady Carwitchet was in ecstasies and tried to coax me
into joining. Leta declined positively. Tom accepted sulkily.

The look in Lord Carwitchet's eye returned to my mind as I locked up my
rubies that night. It made him look