He had drunk half a tumbler of raw brandy, and the brandy had stopped that convulsive trembling which affected him a few minutes before. He put his parcel in his breast pocket, pulled himself together, and walked slowly and stiffly out of the room and out of the house, Mr. Mosheh accompanying him to the door. ‘You can show those stones to as many dealers as you like,’ said the Jew; ‘you’ll find I’m right about ’em. Good night.’ ‘Good night,’ the other answered, faintly, and so disappeared in the wintry fog that wrapped the street round like a veil. ‘Is the fellow a knave or a fool, I wonder?’ questioned Mr. Mosheh. CHAPTER XIX. ‘TO A DEEP LAWNY DELL THEY CAME.’ It was summer-time again, the beginning of June, the time when summer is fairest and freshest, the young leaves in the woods tender and transparent enough to let the sunlight through, the ferns just unfurling their broad feathers, the roses just opening, the patches of common land and furzy corners of meadows ablaze with gold, the sky an Italian blue, the day so long that one almost forgets there is such a thing as night in the world. It was a season that Laura had always loved; and even now, gloomy as was the outlook of her young life, she felt her spirits lightened with the brightness of the land. Her cheerfulness astonished Celia, who was in a state of chronic indignation against John Treverton, which was all the more intense because she was forbidden to talk of him. ‘I never knew any one take things so lightly as you do, Laura,’ she exclaimed one afternoon when she found Mrs. Treverton just returned from a long ramble in the little wood that adjoined the Manor House grounds. ‘Why should I make the most of my troubles? Earth seems so full of gladness and hope at this season that one cannot help hoping.’ ‘You cannot, perhaps. Don’t say one cannot,’ Celia retorted, snappishly, ‘if you mean to include me. I left off hoping before I was eighteen. What is there to hope for in a parish where there are only two eligible bachelors, one of the two as ugly as sin, and the other an incorrigible flirt, a man who seems always on the brink of proposing, yet never proposes?’ ‘You have not counted your devoted admirer, Mr. Sampson. He makes a third.’ ‘Sandy-haired, and village-solicitor. Thank you, Laura, I have not sunk so low as that. If I married him I should have to marry his sister Eliza, and that would be quite too dreadful. No, dear, I can manage to exist as I am, “in maiden meditation, fancy free.” When I change my situation I shall expect to better myself. As for you, Laura, you are a perfect wonder. I never saw you looking so well. Yet in your position I am sure I should have cried my eyes out.’