WILSON, PROUD OF THE important task allotted to him, went off. Holmlock Shears took his ticket at the railway station and entered the Amiens express, in which the Comte and Comtesse de Crozon had already taken their seats.
He merely bowed to them, lit a second pipe and smoked it placidly, standing, in the corridor.
The train started. Ten minutes later, he came and sat down beside the countess and asked:
"Have you the ring on you, madame?"
"Yes."
"Please let me look at it."
He took it and examined it:
"As I thought: it is a faked diamond."
"Faked?"
"Yes, by a new process which consists in subjecting diamond-dust to enormous heat until it melts ... whereupon it is simply reformed into a single diamond."
"Why, but my diamond is real!"
"Yes, yours; but this is not yours."
"Where is
