Mind you, Thomas hadn’t done much in the past year—beyond working nonstop to pull off the $120 million, three-way merger announced last July and completed in March. The deal united Stornoway and two rivals, Ashton Mining and Contact Diamond. The goal was to create a mid-tier diamond company that can finance its own exploration. That would allow investors to bet on the next diamond discovery without the risk of their stakes being severely diluted should the company have to sell stock to raise cash. If Stornaway is successful, the returns could be phenomenal. Aber is a case in point: It traded for $0.30 a share at the beginning of 1991. Today, it trades for $36, a 120-fold return. (Stornoway shares have generally bounced between $0.15 and $2.15, depending on the latest dispatches from the exploration front.)

The deal at first seemed a fait accompli, as Thomas’ old friends at Rio Tinto had sold its 52 percent stake in Ashton to Stornoway. But the reaction from some quarters was angry and pointed. In a September report, industry analyst John Kaiser called the takeover bid a “clumsy, hubris-fueled exercise in power-tripping.” In January, he was not contrite. “Eira refuses to admit that her exploration efforts have failed,” he said. “Basically, she took Ashton away from [its minority shareholders] to save her own company from dying.”

Mention Kaiser to Thomas, and she almost chokes on her tongue. “I would have said that we were friends,” she said in January, “but it’s pretty hard to say that now.” (More recently, Kaiser seems to be coming around; perhaps they can bury the hatchet.) Both she and Manson, Stornoway’s president, dismiss the idea that they’re stealing Ashton’s crown jewels to make up for their own failures. “That’s just silly,” Thomas says, pointing out that even the best-case scenario for Ashton’s most promising prospective mine, in Quebec, is estimated at 21 million carats at most, a fifth of the amount found in Diavik. Not exactly the kind of project she’d look for if she were mounting a diamond heist.

How does Manson feel about walking in the inevitable shadow of Thomas? “I’ve done a lot of work in diamonds,” he says. “But people don’t remember me. She’s got that something-ness that some people have. It’s called celebrity. I’ve got no problem with it at all.”

Over dinner with Thomas, Grenville, and Manson at the Red Lion—a pub Grenville built when his own local was torn down—the conversation ranges from George MacDonald’s Flashman novels (adventure stories, naturally) to the travails of another Canadian corporate icon, Conrad Black.

Between the second and third bottles of wine, Manson suggests a new way of looking at the diamond business. “Diamonds are more like Gucci handbags than copper,” he says, noting that exchanges do not track diamond prices the way they do copper prices. But, he adds, diamonds are also “the only nondiscretionary luxury product. Most women are given a diamond in their lifetime. Most women are not given a Gucci handbag.”

Eira Thomas could buy a Gucci handbag for herself if she wanted one. But she’s also got something money can’t buy: the respect of De Beers. Says Richard Molyneux, the former president and C.E.O. of De Beers Canada: “I would put her team in the top 10 junior companies involved in diamonds in Canada. If something came up, De Beers would be very happy to work with her.”

Industry guru Martin Rapaport—whose Diamonds.net is a trusted source of diamond prices and market information for the industry—explains why Thomas, a woman who could just as well be modeling diamonds as exploring for them, has managed to fit into what is otherwise almost exclusively a man’s industry. “She’s a woman with boots,” he says. “She’s not just a woman sitting in the boardroom.” She’ll probably put those boots back on this year and return to the field. Because, while she says she’s enjoyed the learning experience that came from pulling off a merger, it’s quite clear that corporate maneuverings are not as close to her heart as stomping around in subzero temperatures in the Arctic.

In the meantime, Thomas plans to unpack the boxes still unopened from a move two years ago. It was in the half-unpacked mess that she lost a pair of earrings set with two-carat diamonds from the Diavik mine. She’s pretty sure her dog Melville ate them. (“He likes shiny things,” she says.) She’s philosophical about the loss, even though the earrings held great meaning for her. “Like my dad says, you can’t get caught up in material things. Perhaps it’s a sign to focus on what’s next.” Like figuring out how to tease lightning into striking twice.