“Cowards become quite bold when they are drunk,” put in David Salmon, as if he knew all about it. “You really ought to be careful, Karne, if he is indeed such a scamp.”

Celia began to look anxious. “You make me quite nervous,” she said. “I shall be worried every time Herbert goes out alone. Perhaps Strelitzki will go away from Durlston though, when he finds he cannot get work here.”

“Not he,” rejoined her brother, laying his hand lightly on her shoulder. “When he finds that his bogus conversion scheme won’t work, he will see the error of his ways and return to Judaism, and I dare say he will persuade Mendel’s to take him on again. But you need not be anxious on my account, I assure you, dear; I am quite capable of defending myself against Jacob Strelitzki even should he become obstreperous, and I do not for one moment think he will.”

He spoke lightly, but Celia was not altogether satisfied. From what Anna had told her on various occasions, she could gauge Strelitzki’s temperament fairly well, and feared that, if he had taken it into his head that her half-brother was his enemy, he would do his utmost to pay him back in some way.

She was not far wrong. Jacob Strelitzki went back to the factory in due course, as Herbert had surmised he would: and although he was generally civil to the artist when they met, he never forgot that he owed him a grudge. If time should ever give him an opportunity to retaliate, he meant to use it to the utmost; and if he did hit back at all, he would hit hard.

CHAPTER XIII
THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF JUDAISM

David Salmon’s visit to the Towers, just that week, was rather unfortunate so far as Celia and Dr. Milnes were concerned. Geoffrey was very desirous of having another interview with Celia before he went abroad, but he could not bring himself to meet her fiancé; and feeling himself to be in an equivocal position, he stayed away. Celia was both glad and sorry that he did not come—glad, because under the circumstances it was best that her peace of mind should not be further disturbed; sorry, because Geoffrey was her old friend and playmate, and he was soon to go so far away.

On the day before he sailed, her brother took her to the vicarage to say good-bye. There were two or three visitors present besides the Milnes family, so that she was unable to get a word with him alone: but his eyes scarcely left her face all the time she was there; and he gazed at her so pathetically that once or twice she nearly broke down.

Before she left, he presented her with a living memento of his friendship, in the shape of a tiny Yorkshire terrier, with its silvery hair tied up with ribbon of the colour of forget-me-nots. He knew how fond she was of animals, and noted with gratification that her face lit up with pleasure as she lifted the little creature up and fondled it in her arms. He could not have chosen a more obtrusive reminder of himself, for any inanimate object might have lain unheeded after a time; but Souvenir or “Souvie,” as the little dog was called, remained a living witness to his quondam master’s existence. Such a reminder was quite unnecessary, however, in Celia’s case: she was not in the least danger of forgetting the gallant cavalier of her childhood.

She had wished him good-bye and God-speed in few and simple words, said in the presence of his family and friends; but her heart had been very full. If, at the last moment, he had come to her and persisted in his declaration of love, she might have been persuaded to break off her engagement with David Salmon and accept him, no matter what the consequences. But he had not done so—he had gone without a word,—and therefore she was inclined to think that he had said more than he meant on the night that the news of her father’s death had been received; perhaps he had repented later that he had said so much.