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18
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Gem Trader
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trouble
to read up on the subject of cat's-eyes, he would in all probability
not have parted with a six carat stone of the last description in
exchange for my few golden sovereigns. But as he himself had
picked it up at a suburban sale of household effects, he could not have
registered a loss on the deal. I have not met with a similar cat's-eye
since, and if any of my readers own one I should be interested to hear
of it.
I
remember a time in Paris, when, for some reason of fashion, cat's-eyes
were very popular and the supply of them became somewhat scarce. Now
there happens to be a quartz and asbestos conglomerate, quite pretty
when cut, called Tiger Eye. Tiger Eye, like cat's-eyes, is what the
trade terms "chatoyant", literally "like the eye of a cat", but whereas
cat's-eyes sell by the carat, Tiger Eye is sold by the troy ounce, and
a certain unscrupluous dealer made a corner in Tiger Eye, had it cut
cabochon fashion and sold it at so much a carat to the ignorant. His
profits were as quick and certain as his disappearance was sudden when
the police began to take an interest in him.
It
is no far cry for my imagination to leap from the Paris of my young
manhood to the Vienna of ten years earlier. The digression I have just
taken into the realm of opals has left me still standing at my mother's
table, suspended in hope that among the parcel of gems I should find
some that had been in the High Priest's breastplate, of which my tutor
had told me so much.
Well might I remember what that worthy man taught me! He had a Method. Apart from his then unusual belief
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