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.
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