The Adventures of Romney Pringle/The Paste Diamonds

V.
THE PASTE DIAMONDS

MR. ROMNEY PRINGLE was hunting through a portfolio of engravings in the afternoon.
One of the old prints which lightened the warm distemper of the sitting-room walls had just been summarily displaced. The cord breaking, it had reached the floor a complete wreck, a flower-bowl overturned in the descent having poured its cascade across the broken glass to the utter ruin of the print beneath. A substitute was required, and finding a worthy successor in a 'Diogenes' of Salvator Rosa, engraved in laborious but beautiful line, Pringle was about to replace the portfolio when there came a knock at the outer door. Rising, he admitted a tall, slightly-stooping, grey-haired gentleman of spare habit, who seized his unresisting hand and shook it warmly.
"Why, surely you haven't forgotten me!" exclaimed the stranger, desisting as he observed a stony expression to gather over the face of his host. Pringle started, while his features relaxed into the winning smile which so ably seconded the magnetism of his address.
"What! Can it be Mr. Windrush?"
"Why, of course it is! But how stupid of me!—I ought to have remembered that you've only met me once before, and at that time I

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