"I should think it very probable," Sir Adolphus replied, with the callous indifference of the mere man of science to financial suffering. Sir Charles was bland, but peremptory. "Now, observe," he said, "a grave responsibility rests on your shoulders. The Market depends upon you. You must not ask in any number of outsiders to witness these experiments. Have a few mineralogists and experts, if you like; but also take care to invite representatives of the menaced Interests. I will come myself--I'm engaged to dine out, but I can contract an indisposition; and I should advise you to ask Mosenheimer, and, say, young Phipson. They would stand for the mines, as you and the mineralogists would stand for science. Above all, don't blab; for Heaven's sake, let there be no premature gossip. Tell Schleiermacher not to go gassing and boasting of his success all over London." "We are keeping the matter a profound secret, at Schleiermacher's own request," Cordery answered, more seriously. "Which is why," Charles said, in his severest tone, "you bawled it out at the very top of your voice in Piccadilly!" However, before nightfall, everything was arranged to Charles's satisfaction; and off we went to Lancaster Gate, with a profound expectation that the German professor would do nothing worth seeing. He was a remarkable-looking man, once tall, I should say, from his long, thin build, but now bowed and bent with long devotion to study and leaning over a crucible. His hair, prematurely white, hung down upon his forehead, but his eye was keen and his mouth sagacious. He shook hands cordially with the men of science, whom he seemed to know of old, whilst he bowed somewhat distantly to the South African interest. Then he began to talk, in very German-English, helping out the sense now and again, where his vocabulary failed him, by waving his rather dirty and chemical-stained hands demonstratively about him. His nails were a sight, but his fingers, I must say, had the delicate shape of a man's accustomed to minute manipulation. He plunged at once into the thick of the matter, telling us briefly in his equally thick accent that he "now brobosed by his new brocess to make for us some goot and sadisfactory tiamonds." He brought out his apparatus, and explained--or, as he said, "eggsblained"--his novel method. "Tiamonds," he said, "were nozzing but pure crystalline carbon." He knew how to crystallise it--"zat was all ze secret." The men of science examined the pots and pans carefully. Then he put in a certain number of raw materials, and went to work with ostentatious openness. There were three distinct processes, and he made two stones by each simultaneously. The remarkable part of his methods, he said, was their rapidity and their cheapness. In three-quarters of an hour (and he smiled sardonically) he could produce a diamond worth at current prices two hundred pounds sterling. "As you shall now see me berform," he remarked, "viz zis simple abbaradus."