"Papa's life has indeed been a busy one," answered Mirpah, "but for the future, I hope that he will have ample opportunity to indulge in whatever mode of passing his time may suit his fancy best. With the real business of life, that is, with the money-making part of it, I trust that he has done for ever. What his occupation was you would never guess, Captain Ducie. Come, now, I will wager you half-a-dozen pairs of gloves that out of the same number of guesses you do not succeed in naming papa's business--and it was a business, and in no way connected with any of the learned professions."
"Done!" exclaimed Ducie eagerly, holding out his hand to clench the bet. The tips of Miss Van Loal's fingers rested for an instant in his palm, and Ducie felt that he could well afford to lose.
He was silent for a minute or two, pretending to think. In the end, his six guesses stood as follows: He guessed that Mr. Van Loal had been either a banker, or a stock-broker, or a brewer, or a drysalter, or an architect, or some sort of a contractor.
"Lost!" cried Mirpah in high glee, when the sixth guess was proclaimed. "Papa was none of the things you have named. You, have not gone far enough a-field in your guesses: you have not sufficiently exercised your inventive faculties. No, Captain Ducie, my father was neither a banker, nor anything else that you have specified. _He was a Diamond Merchant_."
Mirpah allowed these last words to slide from between her lips as quietly as though she were making the most commonplace statement in the world; but their effect upon Captain Ducie was apparently to paralyse his faculties for a few moments. All the colour left his face; his eyes, full of trouble and suspicion, sought those of Mirpah, anxious to read there whether or no she had any knowledge of his great secret--whether the stab she had given him was an intentional or an accidental one. Involuntarily his hand sought the folds of his waistcoat. He breathed again. His treasure was still there. In the dark luminous eyes of the beautiful girl before him he read no hint of any crafty secret, of any sinister design. It was nothing more, then, than a strange coincidence. He had been fooled by his own fears. Had this Van Loal and his daughter by some mysterious means become acquainted with his secret, and had they come to Jersey with any ulterior designs against himself, the fact that Van Loal had been a diamond merchant would have been something to conceal as undoubtedly provocative of suspicion. The very fact of such a statement having been made was his surest guarantee that he had nothing sinister to guard against. He had frightened himself with a shadow. The magnificent diamond rings worn by the old man and his daughter were at once accounted for.
"I am afraid that you regret having made such a reckless wager," said Mirpah, with an arch look at the captain. "But, indeed, you ought to pay your forfeit, were it only for having guessed that poor papa had been a drysalter--whatever that may be. I suppose it has something to do with the curing of herrings or hams. A drysalter!" and Mirpah's clear laugh rang out across the sands.
"I own the wager fairly lost," said Ducie, as he prepared to light a cigar, "and will cheerfully pay the forfeit. Had I guessed for a week it would still have been lost. I hardly knew that there were such people as professional diamond merchants in this country."
"They form a small corporation, it is true, but by no means an unimportant one in their own estimation. The professed jewellers, the men who keep the magnificent shops, would be but poorly off without the diamond-dealers to fall back upon. We--the Van Loals--have been members of the guild for three centuries--not in England, but in Amsterdam, where our name is a name of honour. Papa was born there, but he came to England when he was a young man and married an English girl, and from that time he has lived in the country of his adoption. He has promised that next spring we shall visit Amsterdam together: then, for the first time, I shall see the land where my ancestors lived and died."
Mr. Van Loal came up at this juncture, and the semi-confidential talk between Mirpah and Captain Ducie came to an end.
At the table d'hôte that evening Ducie sat between father and daughter. He exerted himself to the utmost to make an agreeable impression on both of them. After dinner the two men had a smoke and a stroll on the pier. They were both men of the world, and had a score of topics in common on which they could talk fluently and well. Ducie's easy languid far niente style of looking at everything that did not impinge on his own personality formed a piquant contrast to the shrewd calculating matter-of-fact way of looking at the same subjects which distinguished the soi-disant Van Loal. They kept each other company till a late hour.