"What a pity!" cried Sepia; "you are destroying the ring! What will Cousin Hesper say?"
Mr. Redmain filed away, heedless; then with the help of a pair of pincers freed the stone, and held it up in his hand.
"You see this?" he said.
"A splendid sapphire!" answered Count Galofta, taking it in his fingers, but, as Mr. Redmain saw, not looking at it closely.
"I have always heard it called a splendid stone," said Sepia, whose complexion, though not her features, passed through several changes while all this was going on: she was anxious.
Nor did her inquisitor fail to surprise the uneasy glances she threw, furtively though involuntarily, in the face of the Count—who never once looked in hers: tolerably sure of himself, he was not sure of her.
"That ring, when I bought it—the stone of it," said Mr. Redmain, "was a star sapphire, and worth seven hundred pounds; now, the whole affair is worth about ten."
As he spoke, he threw the stone into the cup, let it lie a few moments, and took it out again; when, almost with a touch, he divided it in two, the one a mere scale.
"There!" he said, holding out the thin part on the tip of a finger, "that is a slice of sapphire; and there!" holding out the rest of the seeming stone, "that is glass."
"What a shame!" cried Sepia.