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He saw the eyes questioning what the lips would not ask.

“But how I lost it?” he said. “I took the box; I obeyed her behests. The moment was acute; the times peremptory. I sailed for England, hurriedly and secretly, never to this day having feasted my eyes on what lies within there. With me went Lacombe, Madame’s ‘runner’ in the old days–a stolid Berrichon, who had lived upon her bounty to the end. The rogue! the ingrate! We were wrecked upon this coast; we plunged and came ashore. I know not who were lost or saved; but Lacombe and I clung together and were thrown upon the land, the box still in my grasp. We climbed the cliffs where a stair had been cut; we broke eastwards from the upper slopes and staggered on through the blown darkness. Suddenly Lacombe stopped. The day was faint then on the watery horizon; and in the ghostly light I saw his face and read the murder in it. We were standing on the verge of the cleft under Black Venn. ‘No further!’ he whispered. ‘You must go down there!’ He snatched the box from my hand. In the instant of his doing so, stricken by the death terror, the affection to which I was then much subject seized me. I screamed, ‘My God! the guillotine!’ Taken by surprise, he started back, staggered, and went down crashing to the fate he had designed for me. I seemed to lie prostrate for hours, while his moans came up fainter and fainter till they ceased. Then I rose and faced life, lonely, friendless, and a beggar.”

The restless wandering of his eyes travelled over his daughter’s head to the rusty casket by the window.

“It was very well,” he whispered. “I thank my God that He has permitted me at the perfect moment to realize my investment in that dead rascal’s dishonesty. Have I ever desired wealth save for my little pouponne here? And I have sorely tried thee, my George. But the old naturalist had such faith in his prediction. Now–“

His vision was glazing; the muscles of his face were quietly settling to the repose that death only can command.

“Now, I would see the fruit of my prophecy; would see it all hung on the neck, in the hair of my child, that I may die rejoicing. Canst thou force the casket, George?”

The young man turned with a stifled groan. Some tools lay on a shelf hard by. He grasped a chisel and went to his task with shaking hands.

The box was all eaten and corroded. It was a matter of but a few seconds to prise it open. The lid fell back on the table with a rusty clang.

“Ah!” cried the dying man. “What now? Dost thou see them? Quick! quick! to glorify this little head! Are they not exquisite?”

George was gazing down with a dull, vacant feeling at his heart.

“Are they not?” repeated the voice, in terrible excitement.

“They–Mr. De Jussac, they are loveliness itself. Plancine, I will not touch them. You must be the first.”

He strode to the kneeling girl; lifted, almost roughly dragged her to her feet.

“Come!” he said; and, supporting her across the room, whispered madly in her ear: “Pretend! For God’s sake, pretend!”

Plancine’s swimming eyes looked down, looked upon a litter of perished rags of paper, and, lying in the midst of the rubbish, an ancient stained and cockled miniature of a powdered Louis Seize coquette.

This was all. This was the treasure the old crazed vanity had thought sufficient to build her nephew his fortune.

The diamonds! Probably these had long before been sacrificed to the armies ineffectively manoeuvring for the destruction of Monsieur “Veto’s” enemies.

Plancine lifted her head. Thereafter George never ceased to recall with a glad pride the nobility that had shone in her eyes.

“My papa!” she cried softly, going swiftly to the bed; “they are beautiful as the stars that glittered over the old untroubled France!”

De Jussac sprang up on his pillow.

“The guillotine!” he cried. “The beams break into flowers! The axe is a shaft of light!”

And so the glowing blade descended.