ee, which half-embowered the balcony with its green leaves. The
window could be well protected in case of need, having latticed wooden
blinds inside, and heavy shutters shod with iron on the outer wall, and
there were besides strong bolts and sockets from which ran certain wires
whose use I did not know. Below the balcony was a square garden-plot,
shut in with a brick wall, and kept very neat and trim. There were
hollyhocks round the walls, and many-coloured poppies, with many other
shrubs and flowers. My eyes fell on one especially, a tall red-blossomed
rushy kind of flower, that I had never seen before; and that seemed
indeed to be something out of the common, for it stood in the middle of a
little earth-plot, and had the whole bed nearly to itself.

I was looking at this flower, not thinking of it, but wondering all the
while whether Mr. Aldobrand would say the diamond was worth ten thousand
pounds, or fifty, or a hundred thousand, when I heard him speaking, and
turned round quick. 'My sons, and you especially, son John,' he said, and
turned to me: 'this stone that you have brought me is no stone at all,
but glass--or rather paste, for so we call it. Not but what it is good
paste, and perhaps the best that I have seen, and so I had to try it to
make sure. But against high chymic tests no sham can stand; and first it
is too light in weight, and second, when rubbed on this Basanus or
Black-stone, traces no line of white, as any diamond must. But, third and
last, I have tried it with the hermeneutic proof, and dipped it in this
most costly lembic; and the liquor remains pure green and clear, not
turbid orange, a diamond leaves it.'

As he spoke the room spun round, and I felt the sickness and
heart-sinking that comes with the sudden destruction of long-cherished
hope. So it was all a sham, a bit of glass, for which we had risked our
lives. Blackbeard had only mocked us even in his death, and from rich men
we were become the poorest outcasts. And all the other bright fancies
that had been built on this worthless thing fell down at once, like a
house of cards. There was no money now with which to go back rich to
Moonfleet, no money to cloak past offences, no money to marry Grace; and
with that I gave a sigh, and my knees failing should have fallen had not
Elzevir held me.

'Nay, son John,' squeaked the old man, seeing I was so put about, 'take
it not hardly, for though this is but paste, I say not it is worthless.
It is