Green Fire by Stephanie James Page B

about the ring?"
    "Someone suggested it might be the real thing," Rani admitted lamely, wishing she'd never called. This was getting embarrassing.
    "Impossible." Dewhurst chuckled. "Not unless you've switched it with another since I last saw it. Once you've seen real emeralds, worked with them and studied them, it isn't easy to be deceived, Miss Garroway. I know this sounds melodramatic—jewelers sometimes get that way—but the fact is, a good quality, genuine emerald is like a bit of frozen green fire. It's almost hypnotic. One looks deeply into the stone and finds oneself having to make an effort to look away. Good emeralds are almost unbelievable, Miss Garroway. They take away one's breath. Believe me, I couldn't have made a mistake."
    Rani heard the conviction in his voice and smiled wryly to herself. He was right; he did sound impassioned on the subject. She held the ring up to the light again as she listened to Dewhurst. Squinting, she tried to determine if there was any possibility of there being flames of green fire locked inside the stone. She could see nothing of the sort.
    It definitely looked like a beautiful cut green glass to her. Rani heaved a small inner sigh of relief. Of course it was glass. As she had told Mike the previous evening, no one saw emeralds this size outside of a classy jewelry store or a rich collector's safe-deposit box. Glass. Pretty green glass. With, perhaps, a legend attached.
    "Someone mentioned to me the possibility of the ring having once been the focal point of a legend, Mr. Dewhurst. He said it was once called the Clayborne ring and that it dates back to the seventeen hundreds. Any chance the setting itself is that old?"
    "As I recall, it appeared to date from the late eighteen hundreds. Possibly turn of the century. Not terribly old as these things go, but interesting, perhaps. Ambrose undoubtedly came into possession of the setting when he, uh, arranged to copy the stone that had once been in it."
    "So there might once have been a genuine emerald in this ring?"
    "Quite possibly. It would make sense that if Ambrose created a replica, he would have faithfully copied the original. I don't see him having created a paste version of an emerald, for example, if the stone in the ring had once been a ruby or a sapphire. He took pains to duplicate exactly."
    "I see. But all things considered, the setting isn't more than a hundred years old?"
    "If that."
    "And the stone is definitely fake."
    Dewhurst sighed. "I'm afraid so."
    "Don't sound so sorry," Rani laughed. "Actually, the reassurance comes as a great relief. I would hate to think I'd been blithely waving a huge emerald around as though it were junk jewelry.''
    "There is no danger of that, Miss Garroway."
    "Thanks, Mr. Dewhurst. I appreciate your time."
    "I'm happy to have been of service."
    Rani hung up the phone, feeling vastly relieved. Zipp meowed lazily, wandering in from the kitchen to inquire about his own breakfast. He saw Rani sitting on the sofa and meowed again, putting some demand into it.
    "You are a bossy sort of cat, Zipp. What did you ever do before you had me to fetch and carry for you?"
    Zipp watched her as she got to her feet. He trotted quickly after Rani as she went back into the kitchen, satisifed that breakfast was back on schedule.
    Rani spent the morning working on a jigsaw puzzle, finished the mystery novel she had started and then wrote notes to friends. It occurred to her that she might be getting a trifle bored on vacation. It was a strange feeling. Normally she was quite content with her own company. Perhaps she would see about renting a rowboat to take out on the lake. The idea of going out in a boat made her think of picnic lunches, and picnic lunches made her think of sharing the outing with someone.
    She was trying not to picture anyone in particular sitting in the boat with her, when Flint walked past the open window. He had a shovel over one bare shoulder, and he waved as he walked through her line of