As for that father, the head of the family, Humphrey de Bohun--pronounced Deboon--he looks no older. It would be odd if he could. He feels no older--that would be impossible. But he is inclined to colds in the head. He now tells the same story over and over again, the story of the Emerald. And it always ends, "Now guess who it was?" They do not murder him, they give it up; and he dodders out, "Why! It was a jackdaw!" Victoria Mosel has, since the date of the great discovery of the Emerald, spent week-ends at Basingthorpe, Prawley, Hammerton, Gainger, Bifford, then again at Hammerton, then again at Gainger, after that at Little Wackham. Then at Bifford again, then at Gainger, and, of course, at Prawley. She also stayed at the Breitzes' place in Silesia for three months, where she shot the bailiff's dog--by accident. May I tell you that she has spent six weeks in every year on the Riviera? Can I deny that, at this very moment of writing, she is stopping at Hammerton, having passed the last week-end at Gainger and purposing to go on to Bifford? The years leave no mark upon her temporal frame, for the skin was ever tight upon her bones. But she knows that she is getting on--and not in the City sense of that term either. She already envisages the tomb. I am fond of her. I think she will save her soul. One great asset which endears her to the rich of her circle. Sir William Collop is always ready and even eager to come at her bidding to any country house, and there she puts him through his paces, to the enormous joy of the assembled hosts and guests. But she is a good girl--I use the word of a woman now nearing sixty--and she does him no harm. Only, she _does_ make him dance. And why _not_? After dinner, in the palaces of the rich, Sir William Collop is compelled to tell quaint stories of the other rich over whom his position in Scotland Yard gives him insight. Nor is he unwilling. They all call him a good fellow, by which they mean that his accent is as thick as cheese. He will be Collop till he dies. His original name is drowned ten fathoms deep; he is just coming into his pension, and he is an O. B. E. of the third crop. And the emerald? Ah, my friends! My brothers! I will tell you what happened to the emerald!