The Luck of the Vails by E.F. Benson

Mr. Francis soon joined him for tea, and, after proposing a stroll in ten minutes' time, had gone to his room to answer an urgent letter. Harry was well content to wait, for nothing could come amiss to a mood so harmonious as his, and, lighting a cigarette, he strolled round the walls, beholding his forbears. Opposite the portrait of old Francis, second baron, he stood long, and his eye sought and dwelt on the Luck as a familiar object. The sun, streaming through the western windows, fell full on to the picture, and the jewels, so cunning and exact was their portrayal, sparkled with an extraordinary vividness in the gleam. The Luck! Was it the Luck which had given him these days of wonderful happiness, with so great and unspeakable a hope for the days to come? Was this the huge reward it granted him, for which he had paid but with a cold in the head, a burn on the hand, a sprain of the foot?

How curious, at the least, those three coincidences following so immediately on the finding of the Luck had been. How curious, also, this awakening of his (dating from the same time) from the solitary lethargy of his first twenty-one years! For the awakening had come with the coming of Uncle Francis, and his own instant attachment to him. It was indeed he -- he and Geoffrey, at any rate, between them on their visit here -- who had started him on the voyage which had already resulted in the discovery of the world. It was then that his potential self had begun to rustle and stir in the chrysalis of isolation which had grown up round it, very feebly and tentatively indeed at first, but by degrees cracking and bursting its brown bark, then standing with quivering and momently expanding wings, which gradually unfolded and grew strong for flight. The Luck! Was it indeed the gems and the gold which had done this for him?