to obtain it again at all hazards;--they were never famous for
scrupulosity. The Duke of X. was aware of this, and, for a time, the gem
had lain idle, its glory muffled in a casket; but finally, on some grand
occasion, a few months prior to the period of which I have spoken above,
it was determined to set it in the Duchess's coronet. Accordingly, one
day, it was given by her son, the Marquis of G., into the hands of their
solicitor, who should deliver it to her Grace's jeweller. It lay in a
small shagreen case, and, before the Marquis left, the solicitor placed
the case in a flat leathern box, where lay a chain of most singular
workmanship, the clasp of which was deranged. This chain was very broad,
of a style known as the brick-work, but every brick was a tiny gem, set
in a delicate filigree linked with the next, and the whole rainbowed
lustrousness moving at your will, like the scales of some gorgeous
Egyptian serpent:--the solicitor was to take this also to the jeweller.
Having laid the box in his private desk, Ulster, his confidential clerk,
locked it, while he bowed the Marquis down. Returning immediately, the
solicitor took the flat box and drove to the jeweller's. He found the
latter so crowded with customers, it being the fashionable hour, as to
be unable to attend to him; he, however, took the solicitor into his
inner room, a dark fire-proof place, and there quickly deposited the box
within a safe, which stood inside another, like a Japanese puzzle, and
the solicitor, seeing the doors double-locked and secured, departed; the
other promising to attend to the matter on the morrow.

Early the next morning, the jeweller entered his dark room, and
proceeded to unlock the safe. This being concluded, and the inner one
also thrown open, he found the box in a last and entirely, as he had
always believed, secret compartment. Anxious to see this wonder, this
Eye of Morning, and Heart of Day, he eagerly loosened the band and
unclosed the box. It was empty. There was no chain there; the diamond