He showed her a bead that had a picture of a desert on it, with tiny palms waving, and a primitive well. From the back of this he had removed the pale green colouring and there instead glowed the rich ivory-grey thick yet luminous substance of the pearl.
"I was pretty certain of it from the first, that is why I was so keen. It is one of the most wonderful necklaces the world has ever seen. It once belonged to the Russian royal family--as your old man in Seville did. He knew what he was doing when he gave it to your mother, and when he wrote out that paper, which was a deed of gift, witnessed by his old Chinese servant and the Russian consul. I had it translated first thing this morning. It will hold good in a court of law. It was the Chinese servant who painted the pictures on the pearls to hide and disguise them, and by Gee! he was an artist, that fellow. Only a trained eye like mine would have suspected the truth. And let me tell you, Mrs. Valdana, with any one but you I should have made use of my knowledge to my own advantage. It is my business to do so. Every business man is entitled to make use of the ignorance of those he deals with. That is business training, we have learned it and paid for it, the other party has n't. It is like a doctor's fees. You pay him because he knows better than you. He has been in training for years, and paid with his mind and his soul for that training, while you have been busy with other things--training in another direction perhaps. Well, the time comes when you need his training and you pay for it."
"I understand," said Val quietly.
He laughed.
"No, you don't understand at all. You could never understand such a method. You have never got the best of any one in your life. That is why I am not going to use my method in your case. But I can tell you," he added with a grim smile, "it is a unique case. I never did such a thing before in my life and never will again. It is a good thing after all that there are not many people like you in the world, Mrs. Valdana. Jewellers with hearts might be ruined."
"It is very kind of you, but I can't accept this sacrifice of your interests," said Val, stammering a little, very embarrassed and uncomfortable. "I couldn't dream of accepting it," she added firmly.
"Don't worry--skip," said he laughing. "My sacrifice is only comparative. At the worst I stand to make anything between five to twenty-five thousand pounds out of the deal."
"Are you sure?"
"Dead sure--seventy-five thousand pounds sure," he said dryly. "My philanthropy does n't run to such risks as that. It only means that if you had n't happened to be you, it would have been I who took seventy-five and the rest and you who got the speculative twenty-five."
"I think you are too kind," she said. "I don't know how to thank you."