When Mrs. Pemberton, formerly Lady Galton, then Mrs. Munster[1] _née_ de Bohun, was making the straddle between the Pemberton and the Munster connections--what we call joining the slats--she needed five hundred pounds. It sounds ridiculous. But she did. One often does. She had outrun the constable. She did not want to bother her father, and for the very good reason that he had just got damnably knocked in the Hungarian Phosphates on the erroneous advice of that silly man Mowlem. Well, she had taken the emerald to the man who, Vic had told her, was the best expert in London--Mr. Marlovitch, Junior--and (behold!) he had proved to her by infallible tests that it was _paste_. What is more, he had given her proof out of learned books that no emerald of such size ever had existed, or could exist. The Bohuns had patriotism in their blood. Marjorie gave the famous trinket to the State--let me say to England!--under very easy conditions which earned her, I am glad to say, the entry of her daughter into Parliament. These conditions were modest: the emerald was to be permanently exhibited, in a very large case all by itself, in the British Museum, with a tablet engraved at the expense of England--I mean the State--describing it as the largest Emerald in the world--which it would have been if it had been an emerald--and assuring the honest public that it had been given by Catherine the Great to that member of the ancient family of de Bohuns who had served the interests of the State--or rather, let me say, of England--at the Court of All the Russias, in those days when the Semiramis of the North was the admiration of Europe. "What!" you'll exclaim (it's just like you!), "would that regal woman, that generous if somewhat demanding lady, that broad German strong in her nobility, that Monarch of the Snows, Empress of all the Russias, have fallen to deceiving handsome Bill Bones with a piece of paste?" Not a bit of it. You little understood the nature of those who serve power. She had given her emerald--and an emerald it was--to a man in whom she had the fullest confidence; she had given it him with the order to bestow it at once upon the English captain. But her messenger had preferred his own interest and had substituted that larger and false one round which all this dance has been led. And, as the Prime Minister said of his colleague on the front bench who got into trouble over the insurance shares, who shall blame him? Not I. [Footnote 1: Oh! Yes! I know all about it. She would have gone on calling herself Lady Galton from husband (save the mark!) to husband. No, child! It's already getting doubtful. In the future time of which I write it was unknown.] THE END