What, after all, if this series of events was due to the Luck? Certainly, immediately after its finding, three accidents, by fire and frost and rain, had happened to Harry, for none of which could Mr. Francis be held remotely responsible. What if, now, these more serious accidents were to be referred to the same agency? Geoffrey found himself smiling at the absurdity of the thought, yet he still continued to consider it. He did not believe it, so he told himself; his reasonable mind entirely rejected the possibility that a thing inanimate, the work of men's hands, be it made of wood and stone, or gold and precious stones, could control destiny. It mattered not, as far as the Luck was concerned, how one thought of destiny: it was the laws of Nature, if you will, unalterable, of an inexorable logic, or, to refer the matter one step back, it was the will of God, who had set these natural laws at work. Yet were not the sins of the fathers visited on the children? Was it not possible, though ever so dimly and unconjecturably, that some subtle law of this hereditary kind governed the destinies of the Vails, and that without supposing that a cup of gold could be responsible for danger, sudden death, and, on the other hand, for the meting out of great happiness and prosperity, yet that the belief in some man's mind as he watched the chasing of the legend on that plaque of gold was true? He had observed, let us suppose, and correctly observed, some tide in the affairs of the Vails; he had embodied it allegorically in that rhyme on the cup, and the allegory was true, because that which it illustrated was true.
Indeed, he had put his allegory into a form extraordinarily vivid. Night after night the gorgeous goblet had stood before the diners in the light of the candles, and night after night it had seemed to grow more and more alive. What if some occult force lurked there? if some unsleeping presence dwelt in those diamonds? From immemorial time men had believed that certain powers and qualities dwelt in precious stones. There was danger in opals, and warning; they turned stale and dim in the presence of an enemy, and no opal, he remarked, was set in bowl or handle or foot of the cup. Else--here his thought was confused, for the Luck was the potency--it might have sickened and paled when Mr. Francis ate his dinner near it. The amethyst drove away the fumes of wine; in diamonds there was sovereignty; sapphires conferred judgment deep and clear as themselves on their possessor. What if there was truth, however small a residuum, in these tales, and how might the potency of the stones be increased if they were put in their appointed settings with a blessing and a curse?