He went home, and passed at once to his own private laboratory and study. He took with him the tiny jewel-case, and going up to one of the big windows facing the front of the house, took out the stone and looked at it. He looked at it so long that a bystander would have grown impatient. Then he went to the other side of the room, and opened what seemed to be a cupboard, but was really a set of shutters opening upon a window looking on the garden at the back. The light from this window showed the jewel differently.
Before it had been softest green and pink; now a constant red ray gleamed from the centre. He noted it, and turned it many ways. The light still remained—no passing brilliancy or change of colour. Then he went into the inner room, and noted the different blendings and the texture by placing it beneath a glass, there to examine it minutely. Finally he poured out from an old flagon, worked and chased in a substance like polished silver, a liquid that flamed up in the crucible like white-flamed fire, intense and beautiful. And into this he threw a stone that matched in some respects the one he carried in his hand. Under this great strength of heat it disappeared; no tiny fragment of lustre or of substance now remained. And quite remorseless to its fate, he next flung in the stone that Rosalie had given him, and bent forward eagerly to notice the effect.
No change! A glimmering blend of colour on the surface of the flame. Then with his fingers, as if the leaping tongues had been but water, he took the jewel out, and dashed the sprays of fire away like drops of water.
A smile, incredulous and all surprised, at first played on his lips and in his eyes as he looked at the jewel. Then after some deep thought, he started as one from a dream, the light of sudden understanding in his eyes. He placed the stone once more within its case, and put it in an inner pocket, then left the room and locked the door again.
Leaving the wing, he went out into the central hall, and passed across it to the eastern side, with its brilliant door and exterior brightness, all so false to the sordid truth behind. But there he paused, and called across the high, empty, echoing space:
“Everard, what is Mariana’s number? I forget.”
“Thirteen.” The answer was simple and distinct.
“That’s a lucky number, isn’t it?”
“I believe it’s a significant one. Unlucky, some say.”
“We go by the rule of contrary. I think myself it must be lucky.” And he laughed and flung open the great doors and passed inside. They swung to after him.