Lord Galton at once jumped up, relieved; the Professor also extended upwards—less smartly; but when they had risen McTaggart was still on his knees. Then with his face peering into the fur of the bearskin, he added, "No! It's a splinter of coal,"—and he threw that fragment into the fire and continued to rummage.
The Professor and Lord Galton looked at each other. They hesitated whether to go down again; they thought it better to leave it to McTaggart. Poor McTaggart thus remained in the abject attitude to which he had now been subjected for two minutes or more, becoming increasingly convinced that something terrible had happened.... He could not conceive why he should not put his hand upon the thing.... But it was not there.... At last, flushed, more disordered than ever, he pressed the fingers of his left hand upon the floor and stood upright. He was a little blown.
"I can't find it!" he said.
"You must find it!" said Marjorie sharply. Then, remembering herself, she looked at the two who were her equals and cousins and she said:
"One of you must find it! It can't be lost! Nonsense.... Look here, stand back!" She pushed her poor old aunt, who was peering about in a futile fashion. She enlarged the circle, and then said again:
"Now then, you must find it! Look here, I'll find it." They went down again reluctantly, and she herself sank suddenly to her knees and helped the group.
But they looked in vain. They separated the hair of the rug carefully, they lifted it up pettily, edge by edge, and looked beneath. They pressed upon it with their palms to see whether they could not find a lump. Then they took the poor beast up and shook him savagely. But he yielded no emerald. It was gone.
When at last they all rose again—appalled, for the moment silent—Marjorie was as white as the skin upon which she trod.
"It can't be lost," she said again, bitterly. "I say, it can't be lost."
But lost it was.