"He took me through my talk with Mr. Fluette last Wednesday night I don't how many times—anyhow, until he must have had it pretty well photographed upon his mind. For some mysterious reason, he seemed to relish the epithet by which Mr. Fluette had referred to him. I 'll bet I repeated that part of our conversation a score of times; and every time I uttered the word 'hound' Mr. Page chuckled.
"But by and by I came to observe that each mention of either Belle or Mrs. Fluette was received with a courtesy and respect for which I could not account. I was at last moved to ask him whether he was acquainted with them; but he testily shook his head, and bade me with some asperity not to ask questions. He dropped into a brown study pretty soon, so I shut up.
"When he spoke again his words effectively banished all speculation from my mind; in fact, they left me speechless. Of a sudden he looked at me with a sly smile.
"'My boy,' he said, almost in a whisper, 'the ruby 's yours.'"
Thereupon, Maillot declared, Mr. Page inquired whether he had ever seen the ruby; to which the young man replied in the negative. The fire on the hearth had by that time sunk to a glowing bed of coals, and, save for the dim ruddy glow, the illumination was afforded by means of a single candle—just sufficient to make of the commodious library a place of ghostly shadows, and failing to relieve its farther reaches from utter gloom and darkness.
"It's a bonny bit of glass," the old gentleman had next said. "It's as compact a package, I daresay, as one can crowd a fortune into. I 'll get it." With a brusque injunction to his nephew to remain where he was, he took the candle and disappeared behind the curtains of the alcove, which, as the reader will remember, concealed the passageway extending thence, through the conservatory, and into the bedroom.
Maillot could not say how long his uncle was gone; he was still too full of awe and wonder to note the passage of time; but by and by Mr. Page returned, bearing the lighted candle in one hand and a small, worn, leather box in the other.
The first he placed upon the table immediately, and then, after resuming his chair, laid the little leather box in front of himself. He sat absently tapping it with his fingers, and from time to time regarding his nephew with the same secret, indecipherable smile which the young man had already observed and wondered at.
And now we approach the most startling, the most mystifying, stage of this amazing conference.
"Before giving you this ruby," said Mr. Page, after a while, "I 'm going to bind you to a few conditions—for your own protection," he had hastily added, with a grin, when the young man's face suddenly lengthened at this unexpected contingency. "You 'll agree fast enough after you 've heard me. If you don't, you don't get the Paternoster ruby"—and with a peculiar little laugh—"most people would agree to anything for that, my lad."