Page:An African Millionaire.djvu/152

Rh awed tone of voice which he always assumes when Money is blasphemed against. 'Please don't talk quite so loud! All London can hear you.'

Sir Adolphus ran his arm through Charles's most amicably. There's nothing Charles hates like having his arm taken.

'Come along with me to the Athenæum,' he went on, in the same stentorian voice, 'and I'll tell you all about it. Most interesting discovery. Makes diamonds cheap as dirt. Calculated to supersede South Africa altogether.'

Charles allowed himself to be dragged along. There was nothing else possible. Sir Adolphus continued, in a somewhat lower key, induced upon him by Charles's mute look of protest. It was a disquieting story. He told it with gleeful unction. It seems that Professor Schleiermacher, of Jena, 'the greatest living authority on the chemistry of gems,' he said, had lately invented, or claimed to have invented, a system for artificially producing diamonds, which had yielded most surprising and unexceptionable results.

Charles's lip curled slightly. 'Oh, I know the sort of thing,' he said. 'I've heard of it before. Very inferior stones, quite small and worthless, produced at immense cost, and even then not worth looking at. I'm an old bird, you know, Cordery; not to be caught with chaff. Tell me a better one!'

Sir Adolphus produced a small cut gem from his pocket. 'How's that for the first water?' he in-