He was most
uncomfortable. That a man like Cordery should say such things, in
so loud a voice, on no matter how little foundation, openly in
Piccadilly, was enough in itself to make a sensitive barometer
such as Cloetedorp Golcondas go down a point or two.

"Hush, hush!" Charles said solemnly, in that awed tone of voice
which he always assumes when Money is blasphemed against. "_Please_
don't talk quite so loud! All London can hear you."

Sir Adolphus ran his arm through Charles's most amicably. There's
nothing Charles hates like having his arm taken.

"Come along with me to the Athenaeum," he went on, in the same
stentorian voice, "and I'll tell you all about it. Most interesting
discovery. Makes diamonds cheap as dirt. Calculated to supersede
South Africa altogether."

Charles allowed himself to be dragged along. There was nothing else
possible. Sir Adolphus continued, in a somewhat lower key, induced
upon him by Charles's mute look of protest. It was a disquieting
story. He told it with gleeful unction. It seems that Professor
Schleiermacher, of Jena, "the greatest living authority on the
chemistry of gems," he said, had lately invented, or claimed to
have invented, a system for artificially producing diamonds, which
had yielded most surprising and unexceptionable results.

Charles's lip curled slightly. "Oh, I know the sort of thing," he
said. "I've heard of it before. Very inferior stones, quite small
and worthless, produced at immense cost, and even then not worth
looking at. I'm an old bird, you know, Cordery; not to be caught
with chaff. Tell me a better one!"

Sir Adolphus produced a small cut gem from his pocket. "How's that
for the first water?" he inquired, passing it across, with a broad
smile, to the sceptic. "Made under my own eyes--and quite
inexpensively!"

Charles examined it close, stopping short against the railings in
St. James's Square to look at it with his pocket-lens. There was no
denying the truth. It was a capital small gem of the finest quality.

"Made under your own eyes?" he exclaimed, still incredulous. "Where,
my dear sir?--at Jena?"

The answer was a thunderbolt from a blue sky. "No, here in London;
last night as ever was; before myself and Dr. Gray; and about to be
exhibited by the President himself at a meeting of Fellows of the
Royal Society."

Charles drew a long breath. "This nonsense must be stopped," he said
firmly--"it must be nipped in the bud. It won't do, my dear