The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 2

He started. I confess I started too. He thought, and I thought,
that she was about to divulge the mystery of the Moonstone.

"Would you think, to look at me," she went on, "that I am the wretchedest
girl living? It's true, Godfrey. What greater wretchedness can there
be than to live degraded in your own estimation? That is my life now."

"My dear Rachel! it's impossible you can have any reason to speak
of yourself in that way!"

"How do you know I have no reason?"

"Can you ask me the question! I know it, because I know you.
Your silence, dearest, has never lowered you in the estimation
of your true friends. The disappearance of your precious
birthday gift may seem strange; your unexplained connection
with that event may seem stranger still

"Are you speaking of the Moonstone, Godfrey----"

"I certainly thought that you referred----"

"I referred to nothing of the sort. I can hear of the loss of the Moonstone,
let who will speak of it, without feeling degraded in my own estimation.
If the story of the Diamond ever comes to light, it will be known that I
accepted a dreadful responsibility; it will be known that I involved myself
in the keeping of a miserable secret--but it will be as clear as the sun
at noon-day that I did nothing mean! You have misunderstood me, Godfrey.
It's my fault for not speaking more plainly. Cost me what it may, I will be
plainer now. Suppose you were not in love with me? Suppose you were in love
with some other woman?"

"Yes?"

"Suppose you discovered that woman to be utterly unworthy of you?
Suppose you were quite convinced that it was a disgrace to you
to waste another thought on her? Suppose the bare idea of ever
marrying such a person made your face burn, only with thinking
of it."

"Yes?"

"And, suppose, in spite of all that--you couldn't tear her from your heart?
Suppose the feeling she had roused in you (in the time when you
believed in her) was not a feeling to be hidden? Suppose the love this
wretch had inspired in you? Oh, how can I find words to say it in!
How can I make a MAN understand that a feeling which horrifies me at myself,
can be a feeling that fascinates me at the same time? It's the breath
of my life, Godfrey, and it's the poison that kills me--both in one!
Go away! I must be out of my mind to talk as I am talking now.
No! you mustn't leave me--you mustn't carry away a wrong impression.
I must say what is to be said in my own defence. Mind this! HE doesn't know--
he never will know, what I have told you. I will never see him--
I don't care what happens--I will never, never, never see him again!
Don't ask me his name! Don't ask me any more! Let's change the subject.
Are you doctor enough, Godfrey, to tell me why I feel as if I was stifling
for want of breath? Is there a form of hysterics that bursts into words
instead of tears? I dare say! What does it matter? You will get over any
trouble I have caused you, easily enough now. I have dropped to my right
place in your estimation, haven't I? Don't notice me! Don't pity me!
For God's sake, go away!"

She turned round on a sudden, and beat her hands wildly on
the back of the ottoman. Her head dropped on the cushions;
and she burst out crying. Before I had time to feel shocked,
at this, I was horror-struck by an entirely unexpected proceeding
on the part of Mr. Godfrey. Will it be credited that he fell
on his knees at her feet.?--on BOTH knees, I solemnly declare!
May modesty mention that he put his arms round her next?
And may reluctant admiration acknowledge that he electrified her with
two words?

"Noble creature!"

No more than that! But he did it with one of the bursts which have made
his fame as a public speaker. She sat, either quite thunderstruck,
or quite fascinated--I don't know which--without even making
an effort to put his arms back where his arms ought to have been.
As for me, my sense of propriety was completely bewildered.
I was so painfully uncertain whether it was my first duty to close
my eyes, or to stop my ears, that I did neither. I attribute
my being still able to hold the curtain in the right position
for looking and listening, entirely to suppressed hysterics.
In suppressed hysterics, it is admitted, even by the doctors,
that one must hold something.

"Yes," he said, with all the fascination of his evangelical
voice and manner, "you are a noble creature! A woman
who can speak the truth, for the truth's own sake--a woman
who will sacrifice her pride, rather than sacrifice an honest
man who loves her--is the most priceless of all treasures.
When such a woman marries, if her husband only wins her esteem
and regard, he wins enough to ennoble his whole life.
You have spoken, dearest, of your place in my estimation.
Judge what that place is--when I implore you on my knees,
to let the cure of your poor wounded heart be my care.
Rachel! will you honour me, will you bless me, by being
my wife?"

By this time I should certainly have decided on stopping my ears,
if Rachel had not encouraged me to keep them open, by answering him
in the first sensible words I had ever heard fall from her lips.

"Godfrey!" she said, "you must be mad!"

"I never spoke more reasonably, dearest--in your interests,
as well as in mine. Look for a moment to the future. Is your
happiness to be sacrificed to a man who has never known how you
feel towards him, and whom you are resolved never to see again?
Is it not your duty to yourself to forget this ill-fated attachment?
and is forgetfulness to be found in the life you are leading now?
You have tried that life, and you are wearying of it already.
Surround yourself with nobler interests than the wretched interests
of the world. A heart that loves and honours you; a home whose
peaceful claims and happy duties win gently on you day by day--
try the consolation, Rachel, which is to be found THERE!
I don't ask for your love--I will be content with your affection
and regard. Let the rest be left, confidently left, to your
husband's devotion, and to Time that heals even wounds as deep
as yours."

She began to yield already. Oh, what a bringing-up she must have had!
Oh, how differently I should have acted in her place!

"Don't tempt me, Godfrey," she said; "I am wretched enough and reckless enough
as it is. Don't tempt me to be more wretched and more wreckless still!"

"One question, Rachel. Have you any personal objection to me?"

"I! I always liked you. After what you have just said to me,
I should be insensible indeed if I didn't respect and admire you
as well."

"Do you know many wives, my dear Rachel, who respect and admire
their husbands? And yet they and their husbands get on very well.
How many brides go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection
by the men who take them there? And yet it doesn't end unhappily--
somehow or other the nuptial establishment jogs on. The truth is,
that women try marriage as a Refuge, far more numerously than they
are willing to admit; and, what is more, they find that marriage has
justified their confidence in it. Look at your own case once again.
At your age, and with your attractions, is it possible for you to
sentence yourself to a single life? Trust my knowledge of the world--
nothing is less possible. It is merely a question of time.
You may marry some other man, some years hence. Or you may marry
the man, dearest, who is now at your feet, and who prizes your respect
and admiration above the love of any other woman on the face of
the earth."

"Gently, Godfrey! you are putting something into my head
which I never thought of before. You are tempting me with a
new prospect, when all my other prospects are closed before me.
I tell you again, I am miserable enough and desperate enough,
if you say another word, to marry you on your own terms.
Take the warning, and go!"

"I won't even rise from my knees, till you have said yes!"

"If I say yes you will repent, and I shall repent, when it is too late!"

"We shall both bless the day, darling, when I pressed, and when you yielded."

"Do you feel as confidently as you speak?"

"You shall judge for yourself. I speak from what I have seen in my
own family. Tell me what you think of our household at Frizinghall.
Do my father and mother live unhappily together?"

"Far from it--so far as I can see."

"When my mother was a girl, Rachel (it is no secret in the family), she had
loved as you love--she had given her heart to a man who was unworthy of her.
She married my father, respecting him, admiring him, but nothing more.
Your own eyes have seen the result. Is there no encouragement in it for you
and for me?" *

* See Betteredge's Narrative, chapter viii.

"You won't hurry me, Godfrey?"

"My time shall be yours."

"You won't ask me for more than I can give?"

"My angel! I only ask you to give me yourself."

"Take me!"

In those two words she accepted him!

He had another burst--a burst of unholy rapture this time.
He drew her nearer and nearer to him till her face touched his;
and then--No! I really cannot prevail upon myself to carry this
shocking disclosure any farther. Let me only say, that I tried to close
my eyes before it happened, and that I was just one moment too late.
I had calculated, you see, on her resisting. She submitted.
To every right-feeling person of my own sex, volumes could say
no more.

Even my innocence in such matters began to see its way to the end
of the interview now. They understood each other so thoroughly
by this time, that I fully expected to see them walk off together,
arm in arm, to be married. There appeared, however, judging by
Mr. Godfrey's next words, to be one more trifling formality which it
was necessary to observe. He seated himself--unforbidden this time--
on the ottoman by her side. "Shall I speak to your dear mother?"
he asked. "Or will you?"

She declined both alternatives.

"Let my mother hear nothing from either of us, until she is better.
I wish it to be kept a secret for the present, Godfrey. Go now,
and come back this evening. We have been here alone together quite
long enough."

She rose, and in rising, looked for the first time towards the little
room in which my martyrdom was going on.

"Who has drawn those curtains?" she exclaimed.

"The room is close enough, as it is, without keeping the air out of it
in that way."

She advanced to the curtains. At the moment when she laid her hand on them--
at the moment when the discovery of me appeared to be quite inevitable--
the voice of the fresh-coloured young footman, on the stairs,
suddenly suspended any further proceedings on her side or on mine.
It was unmistakably the voice of a man in great alarm.

"Miss Rachel!" he called out, "where are you, Miss Rachel?"

She sprang back from the curtains, and ran to the door.

The footman came just inside the room. His ruddy colour was all gone.
He said, "Please to come down-stairs, Miss! My lady has fainted, and we
can't bring her to again."

In a moment more I was alone, and free to go down-stairs in my turn,
quite unobserved.

Mr. Godfrey passed me in the hall, hurrying out, to fetch the doctor.
"Go in, and help them!" he said, pointing to the room. I found Rachel
on her knees by the sofa, with her mother's head on her bosom.
One look at my aunt's face (knowing what I knew) was enough to warn me of
the dreadful truth. I kept my thoughts to myself till the doctor came in.
It was not long before he arrived. He began by sending Rachel out of
the room--and then he told the rest of us that Lady Verinder was no more.
Serious persons, in search of proofs of hardened scepticism, may be
interested in hearing that he showed no signs of remorse when he looked
at Me.

At a later hour I peeped into the breakfast-room, and the library.
My aunt had died without opening one of the letters which I had addressed
to her. I was so shocked at this, that it never occurred to me,
until some days afterwards, that she had also died without giving me my
little legacy.

CHAPTER VI

(1.) "Miss Clack presents her compliments to Mr. Franklin Blake;
and, in sending him the fifth chapter of her humble narrative,
begs to say that she feels quite unequal to enlarge as she
could wish on an event so awful, under the circumstances,
as Lady Verinder's death. She has, therefore, attached to her
own manuscripts, copious Extracts from precious publications
in her possession, all bearing on this terrible subject.
And may those Extracts (Miss Clack fervently hopes) sound as
the blast of a trumpet in the ears of her respected kinsman,
Mr. Franklin Blake."

(2.) "Mr. Franklin Blake presents his compliments to Miss Clack,
and begs to thank her for the fifth chapter of her narrative.
In returning the extracts sent with it, he will refrain from
mentioning any personal objection which he may entertain to this
species of literature, and will merely say that the proposed
additions to the manuscript are not necessary to the fulfilment
of the purpose that he has in view."

(3.) "Miss Clack begs to acknowledge the return of her Extracts.
She affectionately reminds Mr. Franklin Blake that she is a Christian,
and that it is, therefore, quite impossible for him to offend her.
Miss C. persists in feeling the deepest interest in Mr. Blake,
and pledges herself, on the first occasion when sickness may lay
him low, to offer him the use of her Extracts for the second time.
In the meanwhile she would be glad to know, before beginning
the final chapters of her narrative, whether she may be permitted
to make her humble contribution complete, by availing herself
of the light which later discoveries have thrown on the mystery of
the Moonstone."

(4.) "Mr. Franklin Blake is sorry to disappoint Miss Clack.
He can only repeat the instructions which he had the honour
of giving her when she began her narrative. She is requested
to limit herself to her own individual experience of persons
and events, as recorded in her diary. Later discoveries she
will be good enough to leave to the pens of those persons
who can write in the capacity of actual witnesses."

(5.) "Miss Clack is extremely sorry to trouble Mr. Franklin Blake with
another letter. Her Extracts have been returned, and the expression
of her matured views on the subject of the Moonstone has been forbidden.
Miss Clack is painfully conscious that she ought (in the worldly phrase)
to feel herself put down. But, no--Miss C. has learnt Perseverance
in the School of Adversity. Her object in writing is to know whether
Mr. Blake (who prohibits everything else) prohibits the appearance of
the present correspondence in Miss Clack's narrative? Some explanation
of the position in which Mr. Blake's interference has placed her as
an authoress, seems due on the ground of common justice. And Miss Clack,
on her side, is most anxious that her letters should be produced to speak
for themselves."

(6.) "Mr. Franklin Blake agrees to Miss Clack's proposal,
on the understanding that she will kindly consider this intimation
of his consent as closing the correspondence between them."

(7.) "Miss Clack feels it an act of Christian duty
(before the correspondence closes) to inform Mr. Franklin
Blake that his last letter--evidently intended to offend her--
has not succeeded in accomplishing the object of the writer.
She affectionately requests Mr. Blake to retire to the privacy
of his own room, and to consider with himself whether the training
which can thus elevate a poor weak woman above the reach of insult,
be not worthy of greater admiration than he is now disposed to feel
for it. On being favoured with an intimation to that effect,
Miss C. solemnly pledges herself to send back the complete
series of her Extracts to Mr. Franklin Blake."

[To this letter no answer was received. Comment is needless.

(Signed) DRUSILLA CLACK.]

CHAPTER VII

The foregoing correspondence will sufficiently explain why no choice is left
to me but to pass over Lady Verinder's death with the simple announcement
of the fact which ends my fifth chapter.

Keeping myself for the future strictly within the limits of my own
personal experience, I have next to relate that a month elapsed from
the time of my aunt's decease before Rachel Verinder and I met again.
That meeting was the occasion of my spending a few days under the same
roof with her. In the course of my visit, something happened,
relative to her marriage-engagement with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite,
which is important enough to require special notice in these pages.
When this last of many painful family circumstances has been disclosed,
my task will be completed; for I shall then have told all that I know,
as an actual (and most unwilling) witness of events.

My aunt's remains were removed from London, and were buried
in the little cemetery attached to the church in her own park.
I was invited to the funeral with the rest of the family.
But it was impossible (with my religious views) to rouse myself
in a few days only from the shock which this death had caused me.
I was informed, moreover, that the rector of Frizinghall
was to read the service. Having myself in past times seen
this clerical castaway making one of the players at Lady
Verinder's whist-table, I doubt, even if I had been fit
to travel, whether I should have felt justified in attending
the ceremony.

Lady Verinder's death left her daughter under the care of her
brother-in-law, Mr. Ablewhite the elder. He was appointed
guardian by the will, until his niece married, or came of age.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Godfrey informed his father,
I suppose, of the new relation in which he stood towards Rachel.
At any rate, in ten days from my aunt's death, the secret of
the marriage-engagement was no secret at all within the circle
of the family, and the grand question for Mr. Ablewhite senior--
another confirmed castaway!--was how to make himself and his authority
most agreeable to the wealthy young lady who was going to marry
his son.

Rachel gave him some trouble at the outset, about the choice
of a place in which she could be prevailed upon to reside.
The house in Montagu Square was associated with the calamity
of her mother's death. The house in Yorkshire was associated with
the scandalous affair of the lost Moonstone. Her guardian's own
residence at Frizinghall was open to neither of these objections.
But Rachel's presence in it, after her recent bereavement,
operated as a check on the gaieties of her cousins,
the Miss Ablewhites--and she herself requested that her
visit might be deferred to a more favourable opportunity.
It ended in a proposal, emanating from old Mr. Ablewhite, to try
a furnished house at Brighton. His wife, an invalid daughter,
and Rachel were to inhabit it together, and were to expect him
to join them later in the season. They would see no society
but a few old friends, and they would have his son Godfrey,
travelling backwards and forwards by the London train, always at
their disposal.

I describe this aimless flitting about from one place of residence
to another--this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling
stagnation of soul--merely with the view to arriving at results.
The event which (under Providence) proved to be the means of bringing
Rachel Verinder and myself together again, was no other than the hiring
of the house at Brighton.

My Aunt Ablewhite is a large, silent, fair-complexioned woman,
with one noteworthy point in her character. From the hour of
her birth she has never been known to do anything for herself.
She has gone through life, accepting everybody's help, and adopting
everybody's opinions. A more hopeless person, in a spiritual
point of view, I have never met with--there is absolutely, in this
perplexing case, no obstructive material to work upon. Aunt Ablewhite
would listen to the Grand Lama of Thibet exactly as she listens to Me,
and would reflect his views quite as readily as she reflects mine.
She found the furnished house at Brighton by stopping at an hotel
in London, composing herself on a sofa, and sending for her son.
She discovered the necessary servants by breakfasting in bed one morning
(still at the hotel), and giving her maid a holiday on condition
that the girl "would begin enjoying herself by fetching Miss Clack."
I found her placidly fanning herself in her dressing-gown at eleven
o'clock. "Drusilla, dear, I want some servants. You are so clever--
please get them for me."  I looked round the untidy room.
The church-bells were going for a week-day service; they suggested
a word of affectionate remonstrance on my part. "Oh, aunt!"
I said sadly. "Is THIS worthy of a Christian Englishwoman?
Is the passage from time to eternity to be made in THIS manner?"
My aunt answered, "I'll put on my gown, Drusilla, if you will
be kind enough to help me."  What was to be said after that?
I have done wonders with murderesses--I have never advanced an inch
with Aunt Ablewhite. "Where is the list," I asked, "of the servants
whom you require?"  My aunt shook her head; she hadn't even energy
enough to keep the list. "Rachel has got it, dear," she said,
"in the next room."  I went into the next room, and so saw
Rachel again for the first time since we had parted in Montagu
Square.

She looked pitiably small and thin in her deep mourning.
If I attached any serious importance to such a perishable
trifle as personal appearance, I might be inclined to add
that hers was one of those unfortunate complexions which always
suffer when not relieved by a border of white next the skin.
But what are our complexions and our looks? Hindrances and pitfalls,
dear girls, which beset us on our way to higher things!
Greatly to my surprise, Rachel rose when I entered the room, and came
forward to meet me with outstretched hand.

"I am glad to see you," she said. "Drusilla, I have been in the habit
of speaking very foolishly and very rudely to you, on former occasions.
I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive me."

My face, I suppose, betrayed the astonishment I felt at this.
She coloured up for a moment, and then proceeded to explain herself.

"In my poor mother's lifetime," she went on, "her friends
were not always my friends, too. Now I have lost her, my heart
turns for comfort to the people she liked. She liked you.
Try to be friends with me, Drusilla, if you can."

To any rightly-constituted mind, the motive thus acknowledged was
simply shocking. Here in Christian England was a young woman in a state
of bereavement, with so little idea of where to look for true comfort,
that she actually expected to find it among her mother's friends!
Here was a relative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings
towards others, under the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of
sentiment and impulse! Most deplorable to think of--but, still, suggestive of
something hopeful, to a person of my experience in plying the good work.
There could be no harm, I thought, in ascertaining the extent of the change
which the loss of her mother had wrought in Rachel's character. I decided,
as a useful test, to probe her on the subject of her marriage-engagement
to Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

Having first met her advances with all possible cordiality,
I sat by her on the sofa, at her own request. We discussed
family affairs and future plans--always excepting that one future
plan which was to end in her marriage. Try as I might to turn
the conversation that way, she resolutely declined to take the hint.
Any open reference to the question, on my part, would have been
premature at this early stage of our reconciliation. Besides, I had
discovered all I wanted to know. She was no longer the reckless,
defiant creature whom I had heard and seen, on the occasion
of my martyrdom in Montagu Square. This was, of itself,
enough to encourage me to take her future conversion in hand--
beginning with a few words of earnest warning directed against the hasty
formation of the marriage tie, and so getting on to higher things.
Looking at her, now, with this new interest--and calling to mind
the headlong suddenness with which she had met Mr. Godfrey's
matrimonial views--I felt the solemn duty of interfering with a
fervour which assured me that I should achieve no common results.
Rapidity of proceeding was, as I believed, of importance in this case.
I went back at once to the question of the servants wanted for the
furnished house.

"Where is the list, dear?"

Rachel produced it.

"Cook, kitchen-maid, housemaid, and footman," I read.
My dear Rachel, these servants are only wanted for a term--
the term during which your guardian has taken the house.
We shall have great difficulty in finding persons of character
and capacity to accept a temporary engagement of that sort,
if we try in London. Has the house in Brighton been
found yet?"

"Yes. Godfrey has taken it; and persons in the house wanted him
to hire them as servants. He thought they would hardly do for us,
and came back having settled nothing."

"And you have no experience yourself in these matters, Rachel?"

"None whatever."

"And Aunt Ablewhite won't exert herself?"

"No, poor dear. Don't blame her, Drusilla. I think she is the only really
happy woman I have ever met with."

"There are degrees in happiness, darling. We must have a little talk,
some day, on that subject. In the meantime I will undertake to meet
the difficulty about the servants. Your aunt will write a letter
to the people of the house----"

"She will sign a letter, if I write it for her, which comes
to the same thing."

"Quite the same thing. I shall get the letter, and I will go
to Brighton to-morrow."

"How extremely kind of you! We will join you as soon as you
are ready for us. And you will stay, I hope, as my guest.
Brighton is so lively; you are sure to enjoy it."

In those words the invitation was given, and the glorious prospect
of interference was opened before me.

It was then the middle of the week. By Saturday afternoon
the house was ready for them. In that short interval I had sifted,
not the characters only, but the religious views as well,
of all the disengaged servants who applied to me, and had
succeeded in making a selection which my conscience approved.
I also discovered, and called on two serious friends of mine,
residents in the town, to whom I knew I could confide the pious
object which had brought me to Brighton. One of them--
a clerical friend--kindly helped me to take sittings for our
little party in the church in which he himself ministered.
The other--a single lady, like myself--placed the resources
of her library (composed throughout of precious publications)
entirely at my disposal. I borrowed half-a-dozen works,
all carefully chosen with a view to Rachel. When these had been
judiciously distributed in the various rooms she would be likely
to occupy, I considered that my preparations were complete.
Sound doctrine in the servants who waited on her;
sound doctrine in the minister who preached to her; sound doctrine
in the books that lay on her table--such was the treble
welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless girl!
A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon,
as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives.
The giddy throng passed and repassed before my eyes.
Alas! how many of them felt my exquisite sense of duty done?
An awful question. Let us not pursue it.

Between six and seven the travellers arrived. To my indescribable surprise,
they were escorted, not by Mr. Godfrey (as I had anticipated), but by
the lawyer, Mr. Bruff.

"How do you do, Miss Clack?" he said. "I mean to stay this time."

That reference to the occasion on which I had obliged him
to postpone his business to mine, when we were both visiting
in Montagu Square, satisfied me that the old worldling
had come to Brighton with some object of his own in view.
I had prepared quite a little Paradise for my beloved Rachel--
and here was the Serpent already!

"Godfrey was very much vexed, Drusilla, not to be able to come with us,"
said my Aunt Ablewhite. "There was something in the way which kept him
in town. Mr. Bruff volunteered to take his place, and make a holiday of it
till Monday morning. By-the-by, Mr. Bruff, I'm ordered to take exercise,
and I don't like it. That," added Aunt Ablewhite, pointing out of
window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels, drawn by a man,
"is my idea of exercise. If it's air you want, you get it in your chair.
And if it's fatigue you want, I am sure it's fatigue enough to look at
the man."

Rachel stood silent, at a window by herself, with her eyes fixed on the sea.

"Tired, love?"  I inquired.

"No. Only a little out of spirits," she answered. "I have often
seen the sea, on our Yorkshire coast, with that light on it.
And I was thinking, Drusilla, of the days that can never
come again."

Mr. Bruff remained to dinner, and stayed through the evening.
The more I saw of him, the more certain I felt that he had some
private end to serve in coming to Brighton. I watched him carefully.
He maintained the same appearance of ease, and talked the same
godless gossip, hour after hour, until it was time to take leave.
As he shook hands with Rachel, I caught his hard and cunning eyes
resting on her for a moment with a peculiar interest and attention.
She was plainly concerned in the object that he had in view.
He said nothing out of the common to her or to anyone on leaving.
He invited himself to luncheon the next day, and then he went away to
his hotel.

It was impossible the next morning to get my Aunt Ablewhite out
of her dressing-gown in time for church. Her invalid daughter
(suffering from nothing, in my opinion, but incurable laziness,
inherited from her mother) announced that she meant to remain
in bed for the day. Rachel and I went alone together to church.
A magnificent sermon was preached by my gifted friend on the heathen
indifference of the world to the sinfulness of little sins.
For more than an hour his eloquence (assisted by his glorious voice)
thundered through the sacred edifice. I said to Rachel, when we came out,
"Has it found its way to your heart, dear?"  And she answered,
"No; it has only made my head ache."  This might have been discouraging
to some people; but, once embarked on a career of manifest usefulness,
nothing discourages Me.

We found Aunt Ablewhite and Mr. Bruff at luncheon. When Rachel
declined eating anything, and gave as a reason for it that she
was suffering from a headache, the lawyer's cunning instantly saw,
and seized, the chance that she had given him.

"There is only one remedy for a headache," said this horrible old man.
"A walk, Miss Rachel, is the thing to cure you. I am entirely at
your service, if you will honour me by accepting my arm."

"With the greatest pleasure. A walk is the very thing I was longing for."

"It's past two," I gently suggested. "And the afternoon service,
Rachel, begins at three."

"How can you expect me to go to church again," she asked, petulantly,
"with such a headache as mine?"

Mr. Bruff officiously opened the door for her. In another minute
more they were both out of the house. I don't know when I have felt
the solemn duty of interfering so strongly as I felt it at that moment.
But what was to be done? Nothing was to be done but to interfere at
the first opportunity, later in the day.

On my return from the afternoon service I found that they had just got back.
One look at them told me that the lawyer had said what he wanted to say.
I had never before seen Rachel so silent and so thoughtful.
I had never before seen Mr. Bruff pay her such devoted attention,
and look at her with such marked respect. He had (or pretended that he had)
an engagement to dinner that day--and he took an early leave of us all;
intending to go back to London by the first train the next morning.

"Are you sure of your own resolution?" he said to Rachel at the door.

"Quite sure," she answered--and so they parted.

The moment his back was turned, Rachel withdrew to her own room.
She never appeared at dinner. Her maid (the person with the cap-ribbons)
was sent down-stairs to announce that her headache had returned.
I ran up to her and made all sorts of sisterly offers through the door.
It was locked, and she kept it locked. Plenty of obstructive material
to work on here! I felt greatly cheered and stimulated by her locking
the door.

When her cup of tea went up to her the next morning, I followed
it in. I sat by her bedside and said a few earnest words.
She listened with languid civility. I noticed my serious friend's
precious publications huddled together on a table in a corner.
Had she chanced to look into them?--I asked. Yes--and they
had not interested her. Would she allow me to read a few
passages of the deepest interest, which had probably escaped
her eye? No, not now--she had other things to think of.
She gave these answers, with her attention apparently absorbed
in folding and refolding the frilling on her nightgown. It was
plainly necessary to rouse her by some reference to those worldly
interests which she still had at heart.

"Do you know, love," I said, "I had an odd fancy, yesterday, about Mr. Bruff?
I thought, when I saw you after your walk with him, that he had been telling
you some bad news."

Her fingers dropped from the frilling of her nightgown,
and her fierce black eyes flashed at me.

"Quite the contrary!" she said. "It was news I was interested in hearing--
and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Bruff for telling me of it."

"Yes?"  I said, in a tone of gentle interest.

Her fingers went back to the frilling, and she turned her
head sullenly away from me. I had been met in this manner,
in the course of plying the good work, hundreds of times.
She merely stimulated me to try again. In my dauntless zeal
for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and openly alluded to her
marriage engagement.

"News you were interested in hearing?"  I repeated. "I suppose,
my dear Rachel, that must be news of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?"

She started up in the bed, and turned deadly pale. It was evidently
on the tip of her tongue to retort on me with the unbridled insolence
of former times. She checked herself--laid her head back on the pillow--
considered a minute--and then answered in these remarkable words:

"I SHALL NEVER MARRY MR. GODFREY ABLEWHITE."

It was my turn to start at that.

"What can you possibly mean?"  I exclaimed. "The marriage
is considered by the whole family as a settled thing!"

"Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite is expected here to-day," she said doggedly.
"Wait till he comes--and you will see."

"But my dear Rachel----"

She rang the bell at the head of her bed. The person
with the cap-ribbons appeared.

"Penelope! my bath."

Let me give her her due. In the state of my feelings at that moment,
I do sincerely believe that she had hit on the only possible way
of forcing me to leave the room.

By the mere worldly mind my position towards Rachel might have
been viewed as presenting difficulties of no ordinary kind.
I had reckoned on leading her to higher things by means of a
little earnest exhortation on the subject of her marriage.
And now, if she was to be believed, no such event as her marriage
was to take place at all. But ah, my friends! a working Christian
of my experience (with an evangelising prospect before her)
takes broader views than these. Supposing Rachel really broke
off the marriage, on which the Ablewhites, father and son,
counted as a settled thing, what would be the result?
It could only end, if she held firm, in an exchanging of hard
words and bitter accusations on both sides. And what would
be the effect on Rachel when the stormy interview was over?
A salutary moral depression would be the effect. Her pride
would be exhausted, her stubbornness would be exhausted,
by the resolute resistance which it was in her character
to make under the circumstances. She would turn for
sympathy to the nearest person who had sympathy to offer.
And I was that nearest person--brimful of comfort, charged to
overflowing with seasonable and reviving words. Never had
the evangelising prospect looked brighter, to my eyes, than it
looked now.

She came down to breakfast, but she ate nothing, and hardly uttered a word.

After breakfast she wandered listlessly from room to room--
then suddenly roused herself, and opened the piano.
The music she selected to play was of the most scandalously
profane sort, associated with performances on the stage
which it curdles one's blood to think of. It would have been
premature to interfere with her at such a time as this.
I privately ascertained the hour at which Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite
was expected, and then I escaped the music by leaving
the house.

Being out alone, I took the opportunity of calling upon my
two resident friends. It was an indescribable luxury to find
myself indulging in earnest conversation with serious persons.
Infinitely encouraged and refreshed, I turned my steps back
again to the house, in excellent time to await the arrival
of our expected visitor. I entered the dining-room, always
empty at that hour of the day, and found myself face to face
with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite!

He made no attempt to fly the place. Quite the contrary.
He advanced to meet me with the utmost eagerness.

"Dear Miss Clack, I have been only waiting to see you!
Chance set me free of my London engagements to-day sooner
than I had expected, and I have got here, in consequence,
earlier than my appointed time."

Not the slightest embarrassment encumbered his explanation, though this
was his first meeting with me after the scene in Montagu Square.
He was not aware, it is true, of my having been a witness of that scene.
But he knew, on the other hand, that my attendances at the Mothers'
Small-Clothes, and my relations with friends attached to other charities,
must have informed me of his shameless neglect of his Ladies and of his Poor.
And yet there he was before me, in full possession of his charming voice and
his irresistible smile!

"Have you seen Rachel yet?"  I asked.

He sighed gently, and took me by the hand. I should certainly have snatched
my hand away, if the manner in which he gave his answer had not paralysed me
with astonishment.

"I have seen Rachel," he said with perfect tranquillity.
"You are aware, dear friend, that she was engaged to me?
Well, she has taken a sudden resolution to break the engagement.
Reflection has convinced her that she will best consult her
welfare and mine by retracting a rash promise, and leaving me
free to make some happier choice elsewhere. That is the only
reason she will give, and the only answer she will make to every
question that I can ask of her."

"What have you done on your side?"  I inquired. "Have you submitted."

"Yes," he said with the most unruffled composure, "I have submitted."

His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable,
that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness
to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a gentleman.
I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a dream,
"What does it mean?"

"Permit me to tell you," he replied. "And suppose we sit down?"

He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct remembrance that he was
very affectionate. I don't think he put his arm round my waist
to support me--but I am not sure. I was quite helpless, and his
ways with ladies were very endearing. At any rate, we sat down.
I can answer for that, if I can answer for nothing more.

CHAPTER VIII

"I have lost a beautiful girl, an excellent social position,
and a handsome income," Mr. Godfrey began; "and I have
submitted to it without a struggle. What can be the motive
for such extraordinary conduct as that? My precious friend,
there is no motive."

"No motive?"  I repeated.

"Let me appeal, my dear Miss Clack, to your experience of children,"
he went on. "A child pursues a certain course of conduct.
You are greatly struck by it, and you attempt to get at the motive.
The dear little thing is incapable of telling you its motive.
You might as well ask the grass why it grows, or the birds
why they sing. Well! in this matter, I am like the dear
little thing--like the grass--like the birds. I don't
know why I made a proposal of marriage to Miss Verinder.
I don't know why I have shamefully neglected my dear Ladies.
I don't know why I have apostatised from the Mothers'
Small-Clothes. You say to the child, Why have you been naughty?
And the little angel puts its finger into its mouth,
and doesn't know. My case exactly, Miss Clack! I couldn't
confess it to anybody else. I feel impelled to confess it to
YOU!"

I began to recover myself. A mental problem was involved here.
I am deeply interested in mental problems--and I am not,
it is thought, without some skill in solving them.

"Best of friends, exert your intellect, and help me," he proceeded.
"Tell me--why does a time come when these matrimonial proceedings
of mine begin to look like something done in a dream?
Why does it suddenly occur to me that my true happiness is in
helping my dear Ladies, in going my modest round of useful work,
in saying my few earnest words when called on by my Chairman?
What do I want with a position? I have got a position?
What do I want with an income? I can pay for my bread and cheese,
and my nice little lodging, and my two coats a year.
What do I want with Miss Verinder? She has told me with her
own lips (this, dear lady, is between ourselves) that she
loves another man, and that her only idea in marrying me is
to try and put that other man out of her head. What a horrid
union is this! Oh, dear me, what a horrid union is this!
Such are my reflections, Miss Clack, on my way to Brighton.
I approach Rachel with the feeling of a criminal who is going to
receive his sentence. When I find that she has changed her mind too--
when I hear her propose to break the engagement--I experience
(there is no sort of doubt about it) a most overpowering
sense of relief. A month ago I was pressing her rapturously
to my bosom. An hour ago, the happiness of knowing that I shall
never press her again, intoxicates me like strong liquor.
The thing seems impossible--the thing can't be.
And yet there are the facts, as I had the honour of stating
them when we first sat down together in these two chairs.
I have lost a beautiful girl, an excellent social position,
and a handsome income; and I have submitted to it without a struggle.
Can you account for it, dear friend? It's quite beyond
ME."

His magnificent head sank on his breast, and he gave up his own mental
problem in despair.

I was deeply touched. The case (if I may speak as a spiritual physician)
was now quite plain to me. It is no uncommon event, in the experience
of us all, to see the possessors of exalted ability occasionally humbled
to the level of the most poorly-gifted people about them. The object,
no doubt, in the wise economy of Providence, is to remind greatness that it
is mortal and that the power which has conferred it can also take it away.
It was now--to my mind--easy to discern one of these salutary humiliations
in the deplorable proceedings on dear Mr. Godfrey's part, of which I had
been the unseen witness. And it was equally easy to recognise the welcome
reappearance of his own finer nature in the horror with which he recoiled
from the idea of a marriage with Rachel, and in the charming eagerness which
he showed to return to his Ladies and his Poor.

I put this view before him in a few simple and sisterly words.
His joy was beautiful to see. He compared himself, as I went on,
to a lost man emerging from the darkness into the light.
When I answered for a loving reception of him at the Mothers'
Small-Clothes, the grateful heart of our Christian Hero overflowed.
He pressed my hands alternately to his lips. Overwhelmed by
the exquisite triumph of having got him back among us, I let him
do what he liked with my hands. I closed my eyes. I felt my head,
in an ecstasy of spiritual self-forgetfulness, sinking on his shoulder.
In a moment more I should certainly have swooned away in his arms,
but for an interruption from the outer world, which brought me
to myself again. A horrid rattling of knives and forks sounded
outside the door, and the footman came in to lay the table
for luncheon.

Mr. Godfrey started up, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

"How time flies with YOU!" he exclaimed. "I shall barely catch the train."

I ventured on asking why he was in such a hurry to get back to town.
His answer reminded me of family difficulties that were still
to be reconciled, and of family disagreements that were yet
to come.

"I have heard from my father," he said. "Business obliges
him to leave Frizinghall for London to-day, and he proposes
coming on here, either this evening or to-morrow. I must tell
him what has happened between Rachel and me. His heart is
set on our marriage--there will be great difficulty, I fear,
in reconciling him to the breaking-off of the engagement.
I must stop him, for all our sakes, from coming here till
he IS reconciled. Best and dearest of friends, we shall
meet again!"

With those words he hurried out. In equal haste on my side,
I ran upstairs to compose myself in my own room before meeting
Aunt Ablewhite and Rachel at the luncheon-table.

I am well aware--to dwell for a moment yet on the subject of Mr. Godfrey--
that the all-profaning opinion of the world has charged him with having
his own private reasons for releasing Rachel from her engagement,
at the first opportunity she gave him. It has also reached my ears,
that his anxiety to recover his place in my estimation has been attributed
in certain quarters, to a mercenary eagerness to make his peace (through me)
with a venerable committee-woman at the Mothers' Small-Clothes, abundantly
blessed with the goods of this world, and a beloved and intimate
friend of my own. I only notice these odious slanders for the sake
of declaring that they never had a moment's influence on my mind.
In obedience to my instructions, I have exhibited the fluctuations in my
opinion of our Christian Hero, exactly as I find them recorded in my diary.
In justice to myself, let me here add that, once reinstated in his
place in my estimation, my gifted friend never lost that place again.
I write with the tears in my eyes, burning to say more. But no--
I am cruelly limited to my actual experience of persons and things.
In less than a month from the time of which I am now writing, events in
the money-market (which diminished even my miserable little income) forced me
into foreign exile, and left me with nothing but a loving remembrance
of Mr. Godfrey which the slander of the world has assailed, and assailed
in vain.

Let me dry my eyes, and return to my narrative.

I went downstairs to luncheon, naturally anxious to see how Rachel
was affected by her release from her marriage engagement.

It appeared to me--but I own I am a poor authority in such matters--
that the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other
man whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being
able to control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly ashamed.
Who was the man? I had my suspicions--but it was needless to waste time
in idle speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as a matter
of course, have no concealments from Me. I should hear all about the man;
I should hear all about the Moonstone. If I had had no higher object in
stirring her up to a sense of spiritual things, the motive of relieving her
mind of its guilty secrets would have been enough of itself to encourage me
to go on.

Aunt Ablewhite took her exercise in the afternoon in an invalid chair.
Rachel accompanied her. "I wish I could drag the chair,"
she broke out, recklessly. "I wish I could fatigue myself till I was
ready to drop."

She was in the same humour in the evening. I discovered in one
of my friend's precious publications--the Life, Letters, and Labours
of Miss Jane Ann Stamper, forty-fourth edition--passages which bore
with a marvellous appropriateness on Rachel's present position.
Upon my proposing to read them, she went to the piano.
Conceive how little she must have known of serious people,
if she supposed that my patience was to be exhausted in that way!
I kept Miss Jane Ann Stamper by me, and waited for events with the most
unfaltering trust in the future.

Old Mr. Ablewhite never made his appearance that night.
But I knew the importance which his worldly greed attached to his
son's marriage with Miss Verinder--and I felt a positive conviction
(do what Mr. Godfrey might to prevent it) that we should see
him the next day. With his interference in the matter,
the storm on which I had counted would certainly come,
and the salutary exhaustion of Rachel's resisting powers would
as certainly follow. I am not ignorant that old Mr. Ablewhite
has the reputation generally (especially among his inferiors)
of being a remarkably good-natured man. According to my observation
of him, he deserves his reputation as long as he has his own way,
and not a moment longer.

The next day, exactly as I had foreseen, Aunt Ablewhite
was as near to being astonished as her nature would permit,
by the sudden appearance of her husband. He had barely been
a minute in the house, before he was followed, to MY astonishment
this time, by an unexpected complication in the shape of Mr. Bruff.

I never remember feeling the presence of the lawyer to be
more unwelcome than I felt it at that moment. He looked
ready for anything in the way of an obstructive proceeding--
capable even of keeping the peace with Rachel for one of
the combatants!

"This is a pleasant surprise, sir," said Mr. Ablewhite,
addressing himself with his deceptive cordiality to Mr. Bruff.
"When I left your office yesterday, I didn't expect to have
the honour of seeing you at Brighton to-day."

"I turned over our conversation in my mind, after you had gone,"
replied Mr. Bruff. "And it occurred to me that I might perhaps be
of some use on this occasion. I was just in time to catch the train,
and I had no opportunity of discovering the carriage in which you
were travelling."

Having given that explanation, he seated himself by Rachel.
I retired modestly to a corner--with Miss Jane Ann Stamper
on my lap, in case of emergency. My aunt sat at the window;
placidly fanning herself as usual. Mr. Ablewhite stood up
in the middle of the room, with his bald head much pinker than I
had ever seen it yet, and addressed himself in the most affectionate
manner to his niece.

"Rachel, my dear," he said, "I have heard some very extraordinary
news from Godfrey. And I am here to inquire about it.
You have a sitting-room of your own in this house. Will you
honour me by showing me the way to it?"

Rachel never moved. Whether she was determined to bring matters to a crisis,
or whether she was prompted by some private sign from Mr. Bruff, is more than
I can tell. She declined doing old Mr. Ablewhite the honour of conducting him
into her sitting-room.

"Whatever you wish to say to me," she answered, "can be said here--
in the presence of my relatives, and in the presence" (she looked at
Mr. Bruff) "of my mother's trusted old friend."

"Just as you please, my dear," said the amiable Mr. Ablewhite.
He took a chair. The rest of them looked at his face--
as if they expected it, after seventy years of worldly training,
to speak the truth. I looked at the top of his bald head;
having noticed on other occasions that the temper which was really in
him had a habit of registering itself THERE.

"Some weeks ago," pursued the old gentleman, "my son informed me that
Miss Verinder had done him the honour to engage herself to marry him.
Is it possible, Rachel, that he can have misinterpreted--or presumed upon--
what you really said to him?"

"Certainly not," she replied. "I did engage myself to marry him."

"Very frankly answered!" said Mr. Ablewhite. "And most satisfactory,
my dear, so far. In respect to what happened some weeks since, Godfrey has
made no mistake. The error is evidently in what he told me yesterday.
I begin to see it now. You and he have had a lovers' quarrel--and my foolish
son has interpreted it seriously. Ah! I should have known better than that
at his age."

The fallen nature in Rachel--the mother Eve, so to speak--
began to chafe at this.

"Pray let us understand each other, Mr. Ablewhite," she said.
"Nothing in the least like a quarrel took place yesterday
between your son and me. If he told you that I proposed breaking
off our marriage engagement, and that he agreed on his side--
he told you the truth."

The self-registering thermometer at the top of Mr. Ablewhite's bald head
began to indicate a rise of temper. His face was more amiable than ever--
but THERE was the pink at the top of his face, a shade deeper already!

"Come, come, my dear!" he said, in his most soothing manner,
"now don't be angry, and don't be hard on poor Godfrey!
He has evidently said some unfortunate thing. He was always clumsy
from a child--but he means well, Rachel, he means well!"

"Mr. Ablewhite, I have either expressed myself very badly,
or you are purposely mistaking me. Once for all, it is
a settled thing between your son and myself that we remain,
for the rest of our lives, cousins and nothing more.
Is that plain enough?"

The tone in which she said those words made it impossible,
even for old Mr. Ablewhite, to mistake her any longer.
His thermometer went up another degree, and his voice when
he next spoke, ceased to be the voice which is appropriate to a
notoriously good-natured man.

"I am to understand, then," he said, "that your marriage engagement
is broken off?"

"You are to understand that, Mr. Ablewhite, if you please."

"I am also to take it as a matter of fact that the proposal
to withdraw from the engagement came, in the first instance,
from YOU?"

"It came, in the first instance, from me. And it met, as I have told you,
with your son's consent and approval."

The thermometer went up to the top of the register. I mean,
the pink changed suddenly to scarlet.

"My son is a mean-spirited hound!" cried this furious old worldling.
"In justice to myself as his father--not in justice to HIM--
I beg to ask you, Miss Verinder, what complaint you have to make of
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?"

Here Mr. Bruff interfered for the first time.

"You are not bound to answer that question," he said to Rachel.

Old Mr. Ablewhite fastened on him instantly.

"Don't forget, sir," he said, "that you are a self-invited guest here.
Your interference would have come with a better grace if you had waited until
it was asked for."

Mr. Bruff took no notice. The smooth varnish on HIS wicked
old face never cracked. Rachel thanked him for the advice
he had given to her, and then turned to old Mr. Ablewhite--
preserving her composure in a manner which (having regard to her
age and her sex) was simply awful to see.

"Your son put the same question to me which you have just asked," she said.
"I had only one answer for him, and I have only one answer for you.
I proposed that we should release each other, because reflection had
convinced me that I should best consult his welfare and mine by retracting a
rash promise, and leaving him free to make his choice elsewhere."

"What has my son done?" persisted Mr. Ablewhite. "I have a right
to know that. What has my son done?"

She persisted just as obstinately on her side.

"You have had the only explanation which I think it necessary to give to you,
or to him," she answered.

"In plain English, it's your sovereign will and pleasure, Miss Verinder,
to jilt my son?"

Rachel was silent for a moment. Sitting close behind her, I heard her sigh.
Mr. Bruff took her hand, and gave it a little squeeze. She recovered herself,
and answered Mr. Ablewhite as boldly as ever.

"I have exposed myself to worse misconstruction than that,"
she said. "And I have borne it patiently. The time has gone by,
when you could mortify me by calling me a jilt."

She spoke with a bitterness of tone which satisfied me that the scandal
of the Moonstone had been in some way recalled to her mind.
"I have no more to say," she added, wearily, not addressing
the words to anyone in particular, and looking away from us all,
out of the window that was nearest to her.

Mr. Ablewhite got upon his feet, and pushed away his chair so violently
that it toppled over and fell on the floor.

"I have something more to say on my side," he announced,
bringing down the flat of his hand on the table with a bang.
"I have to say that if my son doesn't feel this insult,
I do!"

Rachel started, and looked at him in sudden surprise.

"Insult?" she repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Insult!" reiterated Mr. Ablewhite. "I know your motive,
Miss Verinder, for breaking your promise to my son! I know
it as certainly as if you had confessed it in so many words.
Your cursed family pride is insulting Godfrey, as it insulted
ME when I married your aunt. Her family--her beggarly family--
turned their backs on her for marrying an honest man,
who had made his own place and won his own fortune.
I had no ancestors. I wasn't descended from a set of
cut-throat scoundrels who lived by robbery and murder.
I. couldn't point to the time when the Ablewhites hadn't a shirt
to their backs, and couldn't sign their own names. Ha! ha!
I wasn't good enough for the Herncastles, when I married.
And now, it comes to the pinch, my son isn't good enough
for YOU. I suspected it, all along. You have got
the Herncastle blood in you, my young lady! I suspected it
all along."

"A very unworthy suspicion," remarked Mr. Bruff. "I am astonished that you
have the courage to acknowledge it."

Before Mr. Ablewhite could find words to answer in, Rachel spoke
in a tone of the most exasperating contempt.

"Surely," she said to the lawyer, "this is beneath notice.
If he can think in THAT way, let us leave him to think as
he pleases."

From scarlet, Mr. Ablewhite was now becoming purple. He gasped for breath;
he looked backwards and forwards from Rachel to Mr. Bruff in such a frenzy
of rage with both of them that he didn't know which to attack first.
His wife, who had sat impenetrably fanning herself up to this time,
began to be alarmed, and attempted, quite uselessly, to quiet him.
I had, throughout this distressing interview, felt more than one inward
call to interfere with a few earnest words, and had controlled myself under
a dread of the possible results, very unworthy of a Christian Englishwoman
who looks, not to what is meanly prudent, but to what is morally right.
At the point at which matters had now arrived, I rose superior to all
considerations of mere expediency. If I had contemplated interposing
any remonstrance of my own humble devising, I might possibly have
still hesitated. But the distressing domestic emergency which now
confronted me, was most marvellously and beautifully provided for in
the Correspondence of Miss Jane Ann Stamper--Letter one thousand and one,
on "Peace in Families."  I rose in my modest corner, and I opened my
precious book.

"Dear Mr. Ablewhite," I said, "one word!"

When I first attracted the attention of the company by rising,
I could see that he was on the point of saying something rude to me.
My sisterly form of address checked him. He stared at me in
heathen astonishment.

"As an affectionate well-wisher and friend," I proceeded, "and as one long
accustomed to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify others,
permit me to take the most pardonable of all liberties--the liberty
of composing your mind."

He began to recover himself; he was on the point of breaking out--
he WOULD have broken out, with anybody else. But my voice
(habitually gentle) possesses a high note or so, in emergencies.
In this emergency, I felt imperatively called upon to have the highest
voice of the two.

I held up my precious book before him; I rapped the open
page impressively with my forefinger. "Not my words!"
I exclaimed, in a burst of fervent interruption.
"Oh, don't suppose that I claim attention for My humble words!
Manna in the wilderness, Mr. Ablewhite! Dew on the parched earth!
Words of comfort, words of wisdom, words of love--the blessed,
blessed, blessed words of Miss Jane Ann Stamper!"

I was stopped there by a momentary impediment of the breath.
Before I could recover myself, this monster in human form shouted
out furiously,--

"Miss Jane Ann Stamper be----!"

It is impossible for me to write the awful word,
which is here represented by a blank. I shrieked as it
passed his lips; I flew to my little bag on the side table;
I shook out all my tracts; I seized the one particular tract
on profane swearing, entitled, "Hush, for Heaven's Sake!";
I handed it to him with an expression of agonised entreaty.
He tore it in two, and threw it back at me across the table.
The rest of them rose in alarm, not knowing what might happen next.
I instantly sat down again in my corner. There had once been
an occasion, under somewhat similar circumstances, when Miss Jane
Ann Stamper had been taken by the two shoulders and turned out
of a room. I waited, inspired by HER spirit, for a repetition of
HER martyrdom.

But no--it was not to be. His wife was the next person whom he addressed.
"Who--who--who," he said, stammering with rage, "who asked this impudent
fanatic into the house? Did you?"

Before Aunt Ablewhite could say a word, Rachel answered for her.

"Miss Clack is here," she said, "as my guest."

Those words had a singular effect on Mr. Ablewhite. They suddenly
changed him from a man in a state of red-hot anger to a man in a
state of icy-cold contempt. It was plain to everybody that Rachel
had said something--short and plain as her answer had been--
which gave him the upper hand of her at last.

"Oh?" he said. "Miss Clack is here as YOUR guest--in MY house?"

It was Rachel's turn to lose her temper at that. Her colour rose,
and her eyes brightened fiercely. She turned to the lawyer, and,
pointing to Mr. Ablewhite, asked haughtily, "What does he mean?"

Mr. Bruff interfered for the third time.

"You appear to forget," he said, addressing Mr. Ablewhite,
"that you took this house as Miss Verinder's guardian, for Miss
Verinder's use."

"Not quite so fast," interposed Mr. Ablewhite. "I have a last word to say,
which I should have said some time since, if this----" He looked my way,
pondering what abominable name he should call me--"if this Rampant Spinster
had not interrupted us. I beg to inform you, sir, that, if my son is not good
enough to be Miss Verinder's husband, I cannot presume to consider his father
good enough to be Miss Verinder's guardian. Understand, if you please, that I
refuse to accept the position which is offered to me by Lady Verinder's will.
In your legal phrase, I decline to act. This house has necessarily been
hired in my name. I take the entire responsibility of it on my shoulders.
It is my house. I can keep it, or let it, just as I please. I have no wish
to hurry Miss Verinder. On the contrary, I beg her to remove her guest and
her luggage, at her own entire convenience."  He made a low bow, and walked
out of the room.

That was Mr. Ablewhite's revenge on Rachel, for refusing to marry his son!

The instant the door closed, Aunt Ablewhite exhibited a phenomenon
which silenced us all. She became endowed with energy enough
to cross the room!

"My dear," she said, taking Rachel by the hand, "I should be ashamed
of my husband, if I didn't know that it is his temper which has spoken
to you, and not himself. You," continued Aunt Ablewhite, turning on me
in my corner with another endowment of energy, in her looks this time
instead of her limbs--"you are the mischievous person who irritated him.
I hope I shall never see you or your tracts again."  She went back
to Rachel and kissed her. "I beg your pardon, my dear," she said,
"in my husband's name. What can I do for you?"

Consistently perverse in everything--capricious and unreasonable in all
the actions of her life--Rachel melted into tears at those commonplace words,
and returned her aunt's kiss in silence.

"If I may be permitted to answer for Miss Verinder," said Mr. Bruff,
"might I ask you, Mrs. Ablewhite, to send Penelope down with her
mistress's bonnet and shawl. Leave us ten minutes together," he added,
in a lower tone, "and you may rely on my setting matters right,
to your satisfaction as well as to Rachel's."

The trust of the family in this man was something wonderful to see.
Without a word more, on her side, Aunt Ablewhite left the room.

"Ah!" said Mr. Bruff, looking after her. "The Herncastle blood has
its drawbacks, I admit. But there IS something in good breeding after all!"

Having made that purely worldly remark, he looked hard at my corner,
as if he expected me to go. My interest in Rachel--an infinitely higher
interest than his--riveted me to my chair.

Mr. Bruff gave it up, exactly as he had given it up at Aunt Verinder's,
in Montagu Square. He led Rachel to a chair by the window, and spoke
to her there.

"My dear young lady," he said, "Mr. Ablewhite's conduct
has naturally shocked you, and taken you by surprise.
If it was worth while to contest the question with such a man,
we might soon show him that he is not to have things all his own way.
But it isn't worth while. You were quite right in what you said
just now; he is beneath our notice."

He stopped, and looked round at my corner. I sat there quite immovable,
with my tracts at my elbow and with Miss Jane Ann Stamper on my lap.

"You know," he resumed, turning back again to Rachel,
"that it was part of your poor mother's fine nature always
to see the best of the people about her, and never the worst.
She named her brother-in-law your guardian because she believed
in him, and because she thought it would please her sister.
I had never liked Mr. Ablewhite myself, and I induced your mother
to let me insert a clause in the will, empowering her executors,
in certain events, to consult with me about the appointment
of a new guardian. One of those events has happened to-day;
and I find myself in a position to end all these dry
business details, I hope agreeably, with a message from my wife.
Will you honour Mrs. Bruff by becoming her guest? And will you
remain under my roof, and be one of my family, until we wise people
have laid our heads together, and have settled what is to be
done next?"

At those words, I rose to interfere. Mr. Bruff had done exactly what I
had dreaded he would do, when he asked Mrs. Ablewhite for Rachel's
bonnet and shawl.

Before I could interpose a word, Rachel had accepted his invitation in
the warmest terms. If I suffered the arrangement thus made between them
to be carried out--if she once passed the threshold of Mr. Bruff's door--
farewell to the fondest hope of my life, the hope of bringing my lost
sheep back to the fold! The bare idea of such a calamity as this quite
overwhelmed me. I cast the miserable trammels of worldly discretion
to the winds, and spoke with the fervour that filled me, in the words
that came first.

"Stop!"  I said--"stop! I must be heard. Mr. Bruff! you are not related
to her, and I am. I invite her--I summon the executors to appoint
me guardian. Rachel, dearest Rachel, I offer you my modest home;
come to London by the next train, love, and share it with me!"

Mr. Bruff said nothing. Rachel looked at me with a cruel astonishment
which she made no effort to conceal.

"You are very kind, Drusilla," she said. "I shall hope to visit you whenever
I happen to be in London. But I have accepted Mr. Bruff's invitation, and I
think it will be best, for the present, if I remain under Mr. Bruff's care."

"Oh, don't say so!"  I pleaded. "I can't part with you, Rachel--I can't
part with you!"

I tried to fold her in my arms. But she drew back. My fervour
did not communicate itself; it only alarmed her.

"Surely," she said, "this is a very unnecessary display of agitation?
I don't understand it."

"No more do I," said Mr. Bruff.

Their hardness--their hideous, worldly hardness--revolted me.

"Oh, Rachel! Rachel!"  I burst out. "Haven't you seen yet,
that my heart yearns to make a Christian of you?
Has no inner voice told you that I am trying to do for you,
what I was trying to do for your dear mother when death snatched
her out of my hands?"

Rachel advanced a step nearer, and looked at me very strangely.

"I don't understand your reference to my mother," she said.
"Miss Clack, will you have the goodness to explain yourself?"

Before I could answer, Mr. Bruff came forward, and offering his arm to Rachel,
tried to lead her out of the room.

"You had better not pursue the subject, my dear," he said.
"And Miss Clack had better not explain herself."

If I had been a stock or a stone, such an interference as this must
have roused me into testifying to the truth. I put Mr. Bruff aside
indignantly with my own hand, and, in solemn and suitable language,
I stated the view with which sound doctrine does not scruple to regard
the awful calamity of dying unprepared.

Rachel started back from me--I blush to write--with a scream of horror.

"Come away!" she said to Mr. Bruff. "Come away, for God's sake,
before that woman can say any more! Oh, think of my poor
mother's harmless, useful, beautiful life! You were at the funeral,
Mr. Bruff; you saw how everybody loved her; you saw the poor helpless
people crying at her grave over the loss of their best friend.
And that wretch stands there, and tries to make me doubt that
my mother, who was an angel on earth, is an angel in heaven now!
Don't stop to talk about it! Come away! It stifles me to breathe
the same air with her! It frightens me to feel that we are in the same
room together!"

Deaf to all remonstrance, she ran to the door.

At the same moment, her maid entered with her bonnet and shawl.
She huddled them on anyhow. "Pack my things," she said,
"and bring them to Mr. Bruff's." I attempted to approach her--
I was shocked and grieved, but, it is needless to say, not offended.
I only wished to say to her, "May your hard heart be softened!
I freely forgive you!"  She pulled down her veil, and tore
her shawl away from my hand, and, hurrying out, shut the door
in my face. I bore the insult with my customary fortitude.
I remember it now with my customary superiority to all feeling
of offence.

Mr. Bruff had his parting word of mockery for me, before he too hurried out,
in his turn.

"You had better not have explained yourself, Miss Clack,"
he said, and bowed, and left the room.

The person with the cap-ribbons followed.

"It's easy to see who has set them all by the ears together," she said.
"I'm only a poor servant--but I declare I'm ashamed of you!"  She too
went out, and banged the door after her.

I was left alone in the room. Reviled by them all, deserted by them all,
I was left alone in the room.

Is there more to be added to this plain statement of facts--
to this touching picture of a Christian persecuted by the world?
No! my diary reminds me that one more of the many chequered chapters
in my life ends here. From that day forth, I never saw Rachel
Verinder again. She had my forgiveness at the time when she insulted me.
She has had my prayerful good wishes ever since. And when I die--
to complete the return on my part of good for evil--she will have
the LIFE, LETTERS, AND LABOURS OF MISS JANE ANN STAMPER left her as a
legacy by my will.

                   SECOND NARRATIVE

Contributed by MATHEW BRUFF, Solicitor, of Gray's Inn
                        Square

CHAPTER I

My fair friend, Miss Clack, having laid down the pen, there are two reasons
for my taking it up next, in my turn.

In the first place, I am in a position to throw the necessary light on
certain points of interest which have thus far been left in the dark.
Miss Verinder had her own private reason for breaking her marriage engagement--
and I was at the bottom of it. Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite had his own private
reason for withdrawing all claim to the hand of his charming cousin--
and I discovered what it was.

In the second place, it was my good or ill fortune, I hardly know which,
to find myself personally involved--at the period of which I am now writing--
in the mystery of the Indian Diamond. I had the honour of an interview,
at my own office, with an Oriental stranger of distinguished manners,
who was no other, unquestionably, than the chief of the three Indians.
Add to this, that I met with the celebrated traveller, Mr. Murthwaite,
the day afterwards, and that I held a conversation with him on the subject
of the Moonstone, which has a very important bearing on later events.
And there you have the statement of my claims to fill the position which I
occupy in these pages.

The true story of the broken marriage engagement comes first in point
of time, and must therefore take the first place in the present narrative.
Tracing my way back along the chain of events, from one end to the other,
I find it necessary to open the scene, oddly enough as you will think,
at the bedside of my excellent client and friend, the late Sir
John Verinder.

Sir John had his share--perhaps rather a large share--of the more
harmless and amiable of the weaknesses incidental to humanity.
Among these, I may mention as applicable to the matter in hand,
an invincible reluctance--so long as he enjoyed his usual
good health--to face the responsibility of making his will.
Lady Verinder exerted her influence to rouse him to a sense
of duty in this matter; and I exerted my influence. He admitted
the justice of our views--but he went no further than that,
until he found himself afflicted with the illness which ultimately
brought him to his grave. Then, I was sent for at last,
to take my client's instructions on the subject of his will.
They proved to be the simplest instructions I had ever received in
the whole of my professional career.

Sir John was dozing, when I entered the room. He roused himself
at the sight of me.

"How do you do, Mr. Bruff?" he said. "I sha'n't be very long about this.
And then I'll go to sleep again."  He looked on with great interest
while I collected pens, ink, and paper. "Are you ready?" he asked.
I bowed and took a dip of ink, and waited for my instructions.

"I leave everything to my wife," said Sir John. "That's all."
He turned round on his pillow, and composed himself to sleep again.

I was obliged to disturb him.

"Am I to understand," I asked, "that you leave the whole of the property,
of every sort and description, of which you die possessed, absolutely to
Lady Verinder?"

"Yes," said Sir John. "Only, I put it shorter. Why can't you put
it shorter, and let me go to sleep again? Everything to my wife.
That's my Will."

His property was entirely at his own disposal, and was of two kinds.
Property in land (I purposely abstain from using technical language),
and property in money. In the majority of cases, I am afraid I should
have felt it my duty to my client to ask him to reconsider his Will.
In the case of Sir John, I knew Lady Verinder to be, not only worthy
of the unreserved trust which her husband had placed in her (all good wives
are worthy of that)--but to be also capable of properly administering
a trust (which, in my experience of the fair sex, not one in a thousand
of them is competent to do). In ten minutes, Sir John's Will was drawn,
and executed, and Sir John himself, good man, was finishing his
interrupted nap.

Lady Verinder amply justified the confidence which her husband had placed
in her. In the first days of her widowhood, she sent for me, and made
her Will. The view she took of her position was so thoroughly sound
and sensible, that I was relieved of all necessity for advising her.
My responsibility began and ended with shaping her instructions into
the proper legal form. Before Sir John had been a fortnight in his grave,
the future of his daughter had been most wisely and most affectionately
provided for.

The Will remained in its fireproof box at my office,
through more years than I Like to reckon up. It was not till
the summer of eighteen hundred and forty-eight that I found
occasion to look at it again under very melancholy circumstances.

At the date I have mentioned, the doctors pronounced the sentence
on poor Lady Verinder, which was literally a sentence of death.
I was the first person whom she informed of her situation; and I found
her anxious to go over her Will again with me.

It was impossible to improve the provisions relating to her daughter.
But, in the lapse of time, her wishes in regard to certain minor legacies,
left to different relatives, had undergone some modification; and it
became necessary to add three or four Codicils to the original document.
Having done this at once, for fear of accident, I obtained her ladyship's
permission to embody her recent instructions in a second Will.
My object was to avoid certain inevitable confusions and repetitions
which now disfigured the original document, and which, to own the truth,
grated sadly on my professional sense of the fitness of things.

The execution of this second Will has been described
by Miss Clack, who was so obliging as to witness it.
So far as regarded Rachel Verinder's pecuniary interests,
it was, word for word, the exact counterpart of the first Will.
The only changes introduced related to the appointment of a guardian,
and to certain provisions concerning that appointment,
which were made under my advice. On Lady Verinder's death,
the Will was placed in the hands of my proctor to be "proved"
(as the phrase is) in the usual way.

In about three weeks from that time--as well as I can remember--the first
warning reached me of something unusual going on under the surface.
I happened to be looking in at my friend the proctor's office, and I
observed that he received me with an appearance of greater interest
than usual.

"I have some news for you," he said. "What do you think I heard
at Doctors' Commons this morning? Lady Verinder's Will has been
asked for, and examined, already!"

This was news indeed! There was absolutely nothing which
could be contested in the Will; and there was nobody I could
think of who had the slightest interest in examining it.
(I shall perhaps do well if I explain in this place,
for the benefit of the few people who don't know it already,
that the law allows all Wills to be examined at Doctors'
Commons by anybody who applies, on the payment of a shilling fee.)

"Did you hear who asked for the Will?"  I asked.

"Yes; the clerk had no hesitation in telling ME.
Mr. Smalley, of the firm of Skipp and Smalley, asked for it.
The Will has not been copied yet into the great Folio Registers.
So there was no alternative but to depart from the usual course,
and to let him see the original document. He looked it
over carefully, and made a note in his pocket-book. Have you any idea
of what he wanted with it?"

I shook my head. "I shall find out," I answered, "before I am a day older.
With that I went back at once to my own office.

If any other firm of solicitors had been concerned in this
unaccountable examination of my deceased client's Will, I might
have found some difficulty in making the necessary discovery.
But I had a hold over Skipp and Smalley which made my course
in this matter a comparatively easy one. My common-law clerk
(a most competent and excellent man) was a brother of
Mr. Smalley's; and, owing to this sort of indirect connection
with me, Skipp and Smalley had, for some years past,
picked up the crumbs that fell from my table, in the shape
of cases brought to my office, which, for various reasons,
I did not think it worth while to undertake. My professional
patronage was, in this way, of some importance to the firm.
I intended, if necessary, to remind them of that patronage,
on the present occasion.

The moment I got back I spoke to my clerk; and, after telling
him what had happened, I sent him to his brother's office,
"with Mr. Bruff's compliments, and he would be glad to know
why Messrs. Skipp and Smalley had found it necessary to examine
Lady Verinder's will."

This message brought Mr. Smalley back to my office in company
with his brother. He acknowledged that he had acted under
instructions received from a client. And then he put it to me,
whether it would not be a breach of professional confidence
on his part to say more.

We had a smart discussion upon that. He was right, no doubt;
and I was wrong. The truth is, I was angry and suspicious--and I
insisted on knowing more. Worse still, I declined to consider any
additional information offered me, as a secret placed in my keeping:
I claimed perfect freedom to use my own discretion. Worse even
than that, I took an unwarrantable advantage of my position.
"Choose, sir," I said to Mr. Smalley, "between the risk of losing your
client's business and the risk of losing Mine."  Quite indefensible,
I admit--an act of tyranny, and nothing less. Like other tyrants,
I carried my point. Mr. Smalley chose his alternative, without a
moment's hesitation.

He smiled resignedly, and gave up the name of his client:

Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

That was enough for me--I wanted to know no more.

Having reached this point in my narrative, it now becomes necessary to place
the reader of these lines--so far as Lady Verinder's Will is concerned--
on a footing of perfect equality, in respect of information, with myself.

Let me state, then, in the fewest possible words, that Rachel
Verinder had nothing but a life-interest in the property.
Her mother's excellent sense, and my long experience,
had combined to relieve her of all responsibility,
and to guard her from all danger of becoming the victim in
the future of some needy and unscrupulous man. Neither she,
nor her husband (if she married), could raise sixpence,
either on the property in land, or on the property in money.
They would have the houses in London and in Yorkshire to live in,
and they would have the handsome income--and that was all.

When I came to think over what I had discovered, I was sorely perplexed
what to do next.

Hardly a week had passed since I had heard (to my surprise
and distress) of Miss Verinder's proposed marriage.
I had the sincerest admiration and affection for her;
and I had been inexpressibly grieved when I heard that she
was about to throw herself away on Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
And now, here was the man--whom I had always believed to be
a smooth-tongued impostor--justifying the very worst that I
had thought of him, and plainly revealing the mercenary object
of the marriage, on his side! And what of that?--you may reply--
the thing is done every day. Granted, my dear sir. But would
you think of it quite as lightly as you do, if the thing was done
(let us say) with your own sister?

The first consideration which now naturally occurred to me was this.
Would Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite hold to his engagement, after what his lawyer
had discovered for him?

It depended entirely on his pecuniary position, of which I knew nothing.
If that position was not a desperate one, it would be well worth his
while to marry Miss Verinder for her income alone. If, on the other hand,
he stood in urgent need of realising a large sum by a given time,
then Lady Verinder's Will would exactly meet the case, and would preserve
her daughter from falling into a scoundrel's hands.

In the latter event, there would be no need for me to distress
Miss Rachel, in the first days of her mourning for her mother,
by an immediate revelation of the truth. In the former event,
if I remained silent, I should be conniving at a marriage which
would make her miserable for life.

My doubts ended in my calling at the hotel in London,
at which I knew Mrs. Ablewhite and Miss Verinder to be staying.
They informed me that they were going to Brighton the next day,
and that an unexpected obstacle prevented Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite
from accompanying them. I at once proposed to take his place.
While I was only thinking of Rachel Verinder, it was possible
to hesitate. When I actually saw her, my mind was made up directly,
come what might of it, to tell her the truth.

I found my opportunity, when I was out walking with her,
on the day after my arrival.

"May I speak to you," I asked, "about your marriage engagement?"

"Yes," she said, indifferently, "if you have nothing more interesting
to talk about."

"Will you forgive an old friend and servant of your family,
Miss Rachel, if I venture on asking whether your heart is set
on this marriage?"

"I am marrying in despair, Mr. Bruff--on the chance of dropping into
some sort of stagnant happiness which may reconcile me to my life."

Strong language! and suggestive of something below the surface,
in the shape of a romance. But I had my own object in view,
and I declined (as we lawyers say) to pursue the question into
its side issues.

"Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite can hardly be of your way of thinking," I said.
"HIS heart must be set on the marriage at any rate?"

"He says so, and I suppose I ought to believe him. He would hardly marry me,
after what I have owned to him, unless he was fond of me."

Poor thing! the bare idea of a man marrying her for his own
selfish and mercenary ends had never entered her head.
The task I had set myself began to look like a harder task than I
had bargained for.

"It sounds strangely," I went on, "in my old-fashioned ears----"

"What sounds strangely?" she asked.

"To hear you speak of your future husband as if you were not quite sure
of the sincerity of his attachment. Are you conscious of any reason
in your own mind for doubting him?"

Her astonishing quickness of perception, detected a change in my voice,
or my manner, when I put that question, which warned her that I had been
speaking all along with some ulterior object in view. She stopped,
and taking her arm out of mine, looked me searchingly in the face.

"Mr. Bruff," she said, "you have something to tell me about
Godfrey Ablewhite. Tell it."

I knew her well enough to take her at her word. I told it.

She put her arm again into mine, and walked on with me slowly.
I felt her hand tightening its grasp mechanically on my arm,
and I saw her getting paler and paler as I went on--but, not a
word passed her lips while I was speaking. When I had done,
she still kept silence. Her head drooped a little, and she
walked by my side, unconscious of my presence, unconscious of
everything about her; lost--buried, I might almost say--in her
own thoughts.

I made no attempt to disturb her. My experience of her disposition warned me,
on this, as on former occasions, to give her time.

The first instinct of girls in general, on being told of anything
which interests them, is to ask a multitude of questions, and then
to run off, and talk it all over with some favourite friend.
Rachel Verinder's first instinct, under similar circumstances,
was to shut herself up in her own mind, and to think it over by herself.
This absolute self-dependence is a great virtue in a man. In a woman it
has a serious drawback of morally separating her from the mass of her sex,
and so exposing her to misconstruction by the general opinion.
I strongly suspect myself of thinking as the rest of the world
think in this matter--except in the case of Rachel Verinder.
The self-dependence in HER character, was one of its virtues
in my estimation; partly, no doubt, because I sincerely admired and
liked her; partly, because the view I took of her connexion with the loss
of the Moonstone was based on my own special knowledge of her disposition.
Badly as appearances might look, in the matter of the Diamond--
shocking as it undoubtedly was to know that she was associated
in any way with the mystery of an undiscovered theft--I was satisfied
nevertheless that she had done nothing unworthy of her, because I
was also satisfied that she had not stirred a step in the business,
without shutting herself up in her own mind, and thinking it
over first.

We had walked on, for nearly a mile I should say before Rachel
roused herself. She suddenly looked up at me with a faint
reflection of her smile of happier times--the most irresistible
smile I have ever seen on a woman's face.

"I owe much already to your kindness," she said. "And I feel
more deeply indebted to it now than ever. If you hear any rumours
of my marriage when you get back to London contradict them at once,
on my authority."

"Have you resolved to break your engagement?"  I asked.

"Can you doubt it?" she returned proudly, "after what you have told me!"

"My dear Miss Rachel, you are very young--and you may find
more difficulty in withdrawing from your present position than
you anticipate. Have you no one--I mean a lady, of course--
whom you could consult?"

"No one," she answered.

It distressed me, it did indeed distress me, to hear her say that.
She was so young and so lonely--and she bore it so well!
The impulse to help her got the better of any sense of my own
unfitness which I might have felt under the circumstances;
and I stated such ideas on the subject as occurred to me
on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability.
I have advised a prodigious number of clients, and have dealt
with some exceedingly awkward difficulties, in my time.
But this was the first occasion on which I had ever found
myself advising a young lady how to obtain her release from a
marriage engagement. The suggestion I offered amounted briefly
to this. I recommended her to tell Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite--
at a private interview, of course--that he had, to her
certain knowledge, betrayed the mercenary nature of the motive
on his side. She was then to add that their marriage,
after what she had discovered, was a simple impossibility--
and she was to put it to him, whether he thought it wisest to
secure her silence by falling in with her views, or to force her,
by opposing them, to make the motive under which she was
acting generally known. If he attempted to defend himself,
or to deny the facts, she was, in that event, to refer him
to ME.

Miss Verinder listened attentively till I had done. She then thanked me
very prettily for my advice, but informed me at the same time that it
was impossible for her to follow it.

"May I ask," I said, "what objection you see to following it?"

She hesitated--and then met me with a question on her side.

"Suppose you were asked to express your opinion of Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite's conduct?" she began.

"Yes?"

"What would you call it?"

"I should call it the conduct of a meanly deceitful man."

"Mr. Bruff! I have believed in that man. I have promised to marry that man.
How can I tell him he is mean, how can I tell him he has deceived me,
how can I disgrace him in the eyes of the world after that? I have degraded
myself by ever thinking of him as my husband. If I say what you tell
me to say to him--l am owning that I have degraded myself to his face.
I can't do that. After what has passed between us, I can't do that!
The shame of it would be nothing to HIM. But the shame of it would be
unendurable to ME."

Here was another of the marked peculiarities in her character
disclosing itself to me without reserve. Here was her
sensitive horror of the bare contact with anything mean,
blinding her to every consideration of what she owed to herself,
hurrying her into a false position which might compromise
her in the estimation of all her friends! Up to this time,
I had been a little diffident about the propriety of the advice
I had given to her. But, after what she had just said,
I had no sort of doubt that it was the best advice that could
have been offered; and I felt no sort of hesitation in pressing
it on her again.

She only shook her head, and repeated her objection in other words.

"He has been intimate enough with me to ask me to be his wife.
He has stood high enough in my estimation to obtain my consent.
I can't tell him to his face that he is the most contemptible of
living creatures, after that!"

"But, my dear Miss Rachel," I remonstrated, "it's equally impossible for you
to tell him that you withdraw from your engagement without giving some reason
for it."

"I shall say that I have thought it over, and that I am satisfied
it will be best for both of us if we part.

"No more than that?"

"No more."

"Have you thought of what he may say, on his side?"

"He may say what he pleases."

It was impossible not to admire her delicacy and her resolution, and it was
equally impossible not to feel that she was putting herself in the wrong.
I entreated her to consider her own position I reminded her that she would
be exposing herself to the most odious misconstruction of her motives.
"You can't brave public opinion," I said, "at the command of private feeling."

"I can," she answered. "I have done it already."

"What do you mean?"

"You have forgotten the Moonstone, Mr. Bruff. Have I not braved
public opinion, THERE, with my own private reasons for it?"

Her answer silenced me for the moment. It set me trying to trace
the explanation of her conduct, at the time of the loss of the Moonstone,
out of the strange avowal which had just escaped her. I might perhaps
have done it when I was younger. I certainly couldn't do it now.

I tried a last remonstrance before we returned to the house.
She was just as immovable as ever. My mind was in a strange
conflict of feelings about her when I left her that day.
She was obstinate; she was wrong. She was interesting;
she was admirable; she was deeply to be pitied. I made her
promise to write to me the moment she had any news to send.
And I went back to my business in London, with a mind exceedingly ill
at ease.

On the evening of my return, before it was possible for me to receive my
promised letter, I was surprised by a visit from Mr. Ablewhite the elder,
and was informed that Mr. Godfrey had got his dismissal--AND HAD ACCEPTED IT--
that very day.

With the view I already took of the case, the bare fact stated
in the words that I have underlined, revealed Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite's
motive for submission as plainly as if he had acknowledged it himself.
He needed a large sum of money; and he needed it by a given time.
Rachel's income, which would have helped him to anything else,
would not help him here; and Rachel had accordingly released herself,
without encountering a moment's serious opposition on his part.
If I am told that this is a mere speculation, I ask, in my turn,
what other theory will account for his giving up a marriage
which would have maintained him in splendour for the rest of
his life?

Any exultation I might otherwise have felt at the lucky turn which things
had now taken, was effectually checked by what passed at my interview with old
Mr. Ablewhite.

He came, of course, to know whether I could give him any explanation
of Miss Verinder's extraordinary conduct. It is needless to say
that I was quite unable to afford him the information he wanted.
The annoyance which I thus inflicted, following on the irritation
produced by a recent interview with his son, threw Mr. Ablewhite
off his guard. Both his looks and his language convinced me
that Miss Verinder would find him a merciless man to deal with,
when he joined the ladies at Brighton the next day.

I had a restless night, considering what I ought to do next.
How my reflections ended, and how thoroughly well founded my distrust
of Mr. Ablewhite proved to be, are items of information which
(as I am told) have already been put tidily in their proper places,
by that exemplary person, Miss Clack. I have only to add--
in completion of her narrative--that Miss Verinder found the quiet
and repose which she sadly needed, poor thing, in my house at Hampstead.
She honoured us by making a long stay. My wife and daughters
were charmed with her; and, when the executors decided on the
appointment of a new guardian, I feel sincere pride and pleasure
in recording that my guest and my family parted like old friends,
on either side.

CHAPTER II

The next thing I have to do, is to present such additional information
as I possess on the subject of the Moonstone, or, to speak
more correctly, on the subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond.
The little that I have to tell is (as I think I have already said)
of some importance, nevertheless, in respect of its bearing very
remarkably on events which are still to come.

About a week or ten days after Miss Verinder had left us,
one of my clerks entered the private room at my office, with a
card in his hand, and informed me that a gentleman was below,
who wanted to speak to me.

I looked at the card. There was a foreign name written on it,
which has escaped my memory. It was followed by a line
written in English at the bottom of the card, which I remember
perfectly well:

"Recommended by Mr. Septimus Luker."

The audacity of a person in Mr. Luker's position presuming
to recommend anybody to me, took me so completely by surprise,
that I sat silent for the moment, wondering whether my own eyes
had not deceived me. The clerk, observing my bewilderment,
favoured me with the result of his own observation of the stranger
who was waiting downstairs.

"He is rather a remarkable-looking man, sir. So dark in the complexion
that we all set him down in the office for an Indian, or something
of that sort."

Associating the clerk's idea with the line inscribed on the card in my hand,
I thought it possible that the Moonstone might be at the bottom of
Mr. Luker's recommendation, and of the stranger's visit at my office.
To the astonishment of my clerk, I at once decided on granting an interview
to the gentleman below.

In justification of the highly unprofessional sacrifice to mere
curiosity which I thus made, permit me to remind anybody
who may read these lines, that no living person (in England,
at any rate) can claim to have had such an intimate connexion
with the romance of the Indian Diamond as mine has been.
I was trusted with the secret of Colonel Herncastle's plan
for escaping assassination. I received the Colonel's
letters, periodically reporting himself a living man.
I drew his Will, leaving the Moonstone to Miss Verinder.
I persuaded his executor to act, on the chance that the jewel
might prove to be a valuable acquisition to the family.
And, lastly, I combated Mr. Franklin Blake's scruples,
and induced him to be the means of transporting the Diamond
to Lady Verinder's house. If anyone can claim a prescriptive
right of interest in the Moonstone, and in everything
connected with it, I think it is hardly to be denied that I am
the man.

The moment my mysterious client was shown in, I felt an inner
conviction that I was in the presence of one of the three Indians--
probably of the chief. He was carefully dressed in European costume.
But his swarthy complexion, his long lithe figure, and his grave
and graceful politeness of manner were enough to betray his Oriental
origin to any intelligent eyes that looked at him.

I pointed to a chair, and begged to be informed of the nature
of his business with me.

After first apologising--in an excellent selection of English words--
for the liberty which he had taken in disturbing me, the Indian produced
a small parcel the outer covering of which was of cloth of gold.
Removing this and a second wrapping of some silken fabric, he placed
a little box, or casket, on my table, most beautifully and richly inlaid
in jewels, on an ebony ground.

"I have come, sir," he said, "to ask you to lend me some money.
And I leave this as an assurance to you that my debt will be
paid back."

I pointed to his card. "And you apply to me," I rejoined,
"at Mr. Luker's recommendation?"

The Indian bowed.

"May I ask how it is that Mr. Luker himself did not advance the money
that you require?"

"Mr. Luker informed me, sir, that he had no money to lend."

"And so he recommended you to come to me?"

The Indian, in his turn, pointed to the card. It is written there,"
he said.

Briefly answered, and thoroughly to the purpose! If the Moonstone
had been in my possession, this Oriental gentleman would have
murdered me, I am well aware, without a moment's hesitation.
At the same time, and barring that slight drawback, I am
bound to testify that he was the perfect model of a client.
He might not have respected my life. But he did what none
of my own countrymen had ever done, in all my experience of them--
he respected my time.

"I am sorry," I said, "that you should have had the trouble of coming to me.
Mr. Luker is quite mistaken in sending you here. I am trusted, like other men
in my profession, with money to lend. But I never lend it to strangers, and I
never lend it on such a security as you have produced."

Far from attempting, as other people would have done, to induce
me to relax my own rules, the Indian only made me another bow,
and wrapped up his box in its two coverings without a word of protest.
He rose--this admirable assassin rose to go, the moment I had
answered him!

"Will your condescension towards a stranger, excuse my asking one question,"
he said, "before I take my leave?"

I bowed on my side. Only one question at parting! The average
in my experience was fifty.

"Supposing, sir, it had been possible (and customary) for you to lend me
the money," he said, "in what space of time would it have been possible
(and customary) for me to pay it back?"

"According to the usual course pursued in this country,"
I answered, "you would have been entitled to pay the money back
(if you liked) in one year's time from the date at which it was
first advanced to you."

The Indian made me a last bow, the lowest of all--and suddenly and softly
walked out of the room.

It was done in a moment, in a noiseless, supple, cat-like way,
which a little startled me, I own. As soon as I was composed
enough to think, I arrived at one distinct conclusion in reference
to the otherwise incomprehensible visitor who had favoured me
with a call.

His face, voice, and manner--while I was in his company--
were under such perfect control that they set all scrutiny
at defiance. But he had given me one chance of looking
under the smooth outer surface of him, for all that.
He had not shown the slightest sign of attempting to fix anything
that I had said to him in his mind, until I mentioned the time
at which it was customary to permit the earliest repayment,
on the part of a debtor, of money that had been advanced
as a loan. When I gave him that piece of information,
he looked me straight in the face, while I was speaking,
for the first time. The inference I drew from this was--
that he had a special purpose in asking me his last question,
and a special interest in hearing my answer to it.
The more carefully I reflected on what had passed between us,
the more shrewdly I suspected the production of the casket,
and the application for the loan, of having been mere formalities,
designed to pave the way for the parting inquiry addressed
to me.

I had satisfied myself of the correctness of this conclusion--
and was trying to get on a step further, and penetrate the Indian's
motives next--when a letter was brought to me, which proved
to be from no less a person that Mr. Septimus Luker himself.
He asked my pardon in terms of sickening servility, and assured
me that he could explain matters to my satisfaction, if I would
honour him by consenting to a personal interview.

I made another unprofessional sacrifice to mere curiosity.
I honoured him by making an appointment at my office,
for the next day.

Mr. Luker was, in every respect, such an inferior creature to the Indian--
he was so vulgar, so ugly, so cringing, and so prosy--that he is quite
unworthy of being reported, at any length, in these pages. The substance
of what he had to tell me may be fairly stated as follows:

The day before I had received the visit of the Indian, Mr. Luker
had been favoured with a call from that accomplished gentleman.
In spite of his European disguise, Mr. Luker had instantly
identified his visitor with the chief of the three Indians,
who had formerly annoyed him by loitering about his house,
and who had left him no alternative but to consult a magistrate.
From this startling discovery he had rushed to the conclusion
(naturally enough I own) that he must certainly be in the company
of one of the three men, who had blindfolded him, gagged him,
and robbed him of his banker's receipt. The result was that
he became quite paralysed with terror, and that he firmly believed
his last hour had come.

On his side, the Indian preserved the character of a perfect stranger.
He produced the little casket, and made exactly the same application
which he had afterwards made to me. As the speediest way of getting
rid of him, Mr. Luker had at once declared that he had no money.
The Indian had thereupon asked to be informed of the best and safest person
to apply to for the loan he wanted. Mr. Luker had answered that the best
and safest person, in such cases, was usually a respectable solicitor.
Asked to name some individual of that character and profession, Mr. Luker
had mentioned me--for the one simple reason that, in the extremity of
his terror, mine was the first name which occurred to him. "The perspiration
was pouring off me like rain, sir," the wretched creature concluded.
"I didn't know what I was talking about. And I hope you'll look over it,
Mr. Bruff, sir, in consideration of my having been really and truly frightened
out of my wits."

I excused the fellow graciously enough. It was the readiest way
of releasing myself from the sight of him. Before he left me,
I detained him to make one inquiry.

Had the Indian said anything noticeable, at the moment of quitting
Mr. Luker's house?

Yes! The Indian had put precisely the same question to Mr. Luker,
at parting, which he had put to me; receiving of course, the same
answer as the answer which I had given him.

What did it mean? Mr. Luker's explanation gave me no assistance
towards solving the problem. My own unaided ingenuity,
consulted next, proved quite unequal to grapple with the difficulty.
I had a dinner engagement that evening; and I went upstairs,
in no very genial frame of mind, little suspecting that the way
to my dressing-room and the way to discovery, meant, on this
particular occasion, one and the same thing.

CHAPTER III

The prominent personage among the guests at the dinner party
I found to be Mr. Murthwaite.

On his appearance in England, after his wanderings, society had been
greatly interested in the traveller, as a man who had passed through
many dangerous adventures, and who had escaped to tell the tale.
He had now announced his intention of returning to the scene of
his exploits, and of penetrating into regions left still unexplored.
This magnificent indifference to placing his safety in peril for the
second time, revived the flagging interest of the worshippers in the hero.
The law of chances was clearly against his escaping on this occasion.
It is not every day that we can meet an eminent person at dinner,
and feel that there is a reasonable prospect of the news of his murder
being the news that we hear of him next.

When the gentlemen were left by themselves in the dining-room, I found myself
sitting next to Mr. Murthwaite. The guests present being all English,
it is needless to say that, as soon as the wholesome check exercised by
the presence of the ladies was removed, the conversation turned on politics
as a necessary result.

In respect to this all-absorbing national topic, I happen to be one of
the most un-English Englishmen living. As a general rule, political talk
appears to me to be of all talk the most dreary and the most profitless.
Glancing at Mr. Murthwaite, when the bottles had made their first round
of the table, I found that he was apparently of my way of thinking.
He was doing it very dexterously--with all possible consideration
for the feelings of his host--but it is not the less certain that he was
composing himself for a nap. It struck me as an experiment worth attempting,
to try whether a judicious allusion to the subject of the Moonstone would
keep him awake, and, if it did, to see what HE thought of the last new
complication in the Indian conspiracy, as revealed in the prosaic precincts
of my office.

"If I am not mistaken, Mr. Murthwaite," I began, "you were acquainted
with the late Lady Verinder, and you took some interest in the strange
succession of events which ended in the loss of the Moonstone?"

The eminent traveller did me the honour of waking up in an instant,
and asking me who I was.

I informed him of my professional connection with the Herncastle family,
not forgetting the curious position which I had occupied towards the Colonel
and his Diamond in the bygone time.

Mr. Murthwaite shifted round in his chair, so as to put the rest
of the company behind him (Conservatives and Liberals alike),
and concentrated his whole attention on plain Mr. Bruff, of Gray's
Inn Square.

"Have you heard anything, lately, of the Indians?" he asked.

"I have every reason to believe," I answered, "that one of them
had an interview with me, in my office, yesterday."

Mr. Murthwaite was not an easy man to astonish; but that last answer of mine
completely staggered him. I described what had happened to Mr. Luker,
and what had happened to myself, exactly as I have described it here.
"It is clear that the Indian's parting inquiry had an object," I added.
"Why should he be so anxious to know the time at which a borrower of money is
usually privileged to pay the money back?"

"Is it possible that you don't see his motive, Mr. Bruff?"

"I am ashamed of my stupidity, Mr. Murthwaite--but I certainly don't see it."

The great traveller became quite interested in sounding the immense vacuity
of my dulness to its lowest depths.

"Let me ask you one question," he said. "In what position does
the conspiracy to seize the Moonstone now stand?"

"I can't say," I answered. "The Indian plot is a mystery to me."

"The Indian plot, Mr. Bruff, can only be a mystery to you, because you
have never seriously examined it. Shall we run it over together,
from the time when you drew Colonel Herncastle's Will, to the time
when the Indian called at your office? In your position, it may be
of very serious importance to the interests of Miss Verinder, that you
should be able to take a clear view of this matter in case of need.
Tell me, bearing that in mind, whether you will penetrate the Indian's
motive for yourself? or whether you wish me to save you the trouble
of making any inquiry into it?"

It is needless to say that I thoroughly appreciated the practical
purpose which I now saw that he had in view, and that the first
of the two alternatives was the alternative I chose.

"Very good," said Mr. Murthwaite. "We will take the question
of the ages of the three Indians first. I can testify that they
all look much about the same age--and you can decide for yourself,
whether the man whom you saw was, or was not, in the prime of life.
Not forty, you think? My idea too. We will say not forty.
Now look back to the time when Colonel Herncastle came
to England, and when you were concerned in the plan he adopted
to preserve his life. I don't want you to count the years.
I will only say, it is clear that these present Indians,
at their age, must be the successors of three other Indians
(high caste Brahmins all of them, Mr. Bruff, when they left
their native country!) who followed the Colonel to these shores.
Very well. These present men of ours have succeeded to the men
who were here before them. If they had only done that,
the matter would not have been worth inquiring into.
But they have done more. They have succeeded to the organisation
which their predecessors established in this country.
Don't start! The organisation is a very trumpery affair,
according to our ideas, I have no doubt. I should reckon it up
as including the command of money; the services, when needed,
of that shady sort of Englishman, who lives in the byways
of foreign life in London; and, lastly, the secret sympathy
of such few men of their own country, and (formerly, at least)
of their own religion, as happen to be employed in ministering
to some of the multitudinous wants of this great city.
Nothing very formidable, as you see! But worth notice
at starting, because we may find occasion to refer
to this modest little Indian organisation as we go on.
Having now cleared the ground, I am going to ask you a question;
and I expect your experience to answer it. What was the event
which gave the Indians their first chance of seizing the
Diamond?"

I understood the allusion to my experience.

"The first chance they got," I replied, "was clearly offered to them
by Colonel Herncastle's death. They would be aware of his death,
I suppose, as a matter of course?"

"As a matter of course. And his death, as you say, gave them their
first chance. Up to that time the Moonstone was safe in the strong-room
of the bank. You drew the Colonel's Will leaving his jewel to his niece;
and the Will was proved in the usual way. As a lawyer, you can be at no
loss to know what course the Indians would take (under English advice)
after THAT."

"They would provide themselves with a copy of the Will
from Doctors' Commons," I said.

"Exactly. One or other of those shady Englishmen to whom I
have alluded, would get them the copy you have described.
That copy would inform them that the Moonstone was bequeathed
to the daughter of Lady Verinder, and that Mr. Blake the elder,
or some person appointed by him, was to place it in her hands.
You will agree with me that the necessary information about
persons in the position of Lady Verinder and Mr. Blake,
would be perfectly easy information to obtain. The one difficulty
for the Indians would be to decide whether they should make
their attempt on the Diamond when it was in course of removal
from the keeping of the bank, or whether they should wait until
it was taken down to Yorkshire to Lady Verinder's house.
The second way would be manifestly the safest way--and there you
have the explanation of the appearance of the Indians at Frizinghall,
disguised as jugglers, and waiting their time. In London,
it is needless to say, they had their organisation at their
disposal to keep them informed of events. Two men would do it.
One to follow anybody who went from Mr. Blake's house to the bank.
And one to treat the lower men servants with beer, and to hear
the news of the house. These commonplace precautions would
readily inform them that Mr. Franklin Blake had been to the bank,
and that Mr. Franklin Blake was the only person in the house
who was going to visit Lady Verinder. What actually followed upon
that discovery, you remember, no doubt, quite as correctly as
I do."

I remembered that Franklin Blake had detected one of the spies, in the street--
that he had, in consequence, advanced the time of his arrival in Yorkshire
by some hours--and that (thanks to old Betteredge's excellent advice) he had
lodged the Diamond in the bank at Frizinghall, before the Indians were so much
as prepared to see him in the neighbourhood. All perfectly clear so far.
But the Indians being ignorant of the precautions thus taken, how was it that
they had made no attempt on Lady Verinder's house (in which they must have
supposed the Diamond to be) through the whole of the interval that elapsed
before Rachel's birthday?

In putting this difficulty to Mr. Murthwaite, I thought it right
to add that I had heard of the little boy, and the drop of ink,
and the rest of it, and that any explanation based on the theory
of clairvoyance was an explanation which would carry no conviction
whatever with it, to MY mind.

"Nor to mine either," said Mr. Murthwaite. "The clairvoyance
in this case is simply a development of the romantic side
of the Indian character. It would be refreshment and an
encouragement to those men--quite inconceivable, I grant you,
to the English mind--to surround their wearisome and perilous
errand in this country with a certain halo of the marvellous
and the supernatural. Their boy is unquestionably a sensitive
subject to the mesmeric influence--and, under that influence,
he has no doubt reflected what was already in the mind of the person
mesmerising him. I have tested the theory of clairvoyance--
and I have never found the manifestations get beyond that point.
The Indians don't investigate the matter in this way;
the Indians look upon their boy as a Seer of things invisible
to their eyes--and, I repeat, in that marvel they find
the source of a new interest in the purpose that unites them.
I only notice this as offering a curious view of human character,
which must be quite new to you. We have nothing whatever
to do with clairvoyance, or with mesmerism, or with anything
else that is hard of belief to a practical man, in the inquiry
that we are now pursuing. My object in following the Indian plot,
step by step, is to trace results back, by rational means,
to natural causes. Have I succeeded to your satisfaction
so far?"

"Not a doubt of it, Mr. Murthwaite! I am waiting, however, with some anxiety,
to hear the rational explanation of the difficulty which I have just had
the honour of submitting to you."

Mr. Murthwaite smiled. "It's the easiest difficulty to deal with of all,"
he said. "Permit me to begin by admitting your statement of the case
as a perfectly correct one. The Indians were undoubtedly not aware
of what Mr. Franklin Blake had done with the Diamond--for we find them
making their first mistake, on the first night of Mr. Blake's arrival at
his aunt's house."

"Their first mistake?"  I repeated.

"Certainly! The mistake of allowing themselves to be surprised,
lurking about the terrace at night, by Gabriel Betteredge.
However, they had the merit of seeing for themselves that they
had taken a false step--for, as you say, again, with plenty
of time at their disposal, they never came near the house
for weeks afterwards."

"Why, Mr. Murthwaite? That's what I want to know! Why?"

"Because no Indian, Mr. Bruff, ever runs an unnecessary risk.
The clause you drew in Colonel Herncastle's Will, informed them
(didn't it?) that the Moonstone was to pass absolutely into
Miss Verinder's possession on her birthday. Very well.
Tell me which was the safest course for men in their position?
To make their attempt on the Diamond while it was under the control
of Mr. Franklin Blake, who had shown already that he could
suspect and outwit them? Or to wait till the Diamond was at
the disposal of a young girl, who would innocently delight
in wearing the magnificent jewel at every possible opportunity?
Perhaps you want a proof that my theory is correct?
Take the conduct of the Indians themselves as the proof.
They appeared at the house, after waiting all those weeks,
on Miss Verinder's birthday; and they were rewarded
for the patient accuracy of their calculations by seeing
the Moonstone in the bosom of her dress! When I heard
the story of the Colonel and the Diamond, later in the evening,
I felt so sure about the risk Mr. Franklin Blake had run
(they would have certainly attacked him, if he had not happened
to ride back to Lady Verinder's in the company of other people);
and I was so strongly convinced of the worse risk still,
in store for Miss Verinder, that I recommended following
the Colonel's plan, and destroying the identity of the gem
by having it cut into separate stones. How its extraordinary
disappearance that night, made my advice useless, and utterly
defeated the Hindoo plot--and how all further action on the part
of the Indians was paralysed the next day by their confinement
in prison as rogues and vagabonds--you know as well as I do.
The first act in the conspiracy closes there. Before we go
on to the second, may I ask whether I have met your difficulty,
with an explanation which is satisfactory to the mind of a practical
man?"

It was impossible to deny that he had met my difficulty fairly;
thanks to his superior knowledge of the Indian character--
and thanks to his not having had hundreds of other Wills to think
of since Colonel Herncastle's time!

"So far, so good," resumed Mr. Murthwaite. "The first chance
the Indians had of seizing the Diamond was a chance lost,
on the day when they were committed to the prison at Frizinghall.
When did the second chance offer itself? The second chance
offered itself--as I am in a condition to prove--while they were
still in confinement."

He took out his pocket-book, and opened it at a particular leaf,
before he went on.

"I was staying," he resumed, "with some friends at Frizinghall,
at the time. A day or two before the Indians were set free
(on a Monday, I think), the governor of the prison came to me
with a letter. It had been left for the Indians by one Mrs. Macann,
of whom they had hired the lodging in which they lived; and it had
been delivered at Mrs. Macann's door, in ordinary course of post,
on the previous morning. The prison authorities had noticed that
the postmark was 'Lambeth,' and that the address on the outside,
though expressed in correct English, was, in form, oddly at variance
with the customary method of directing a letter. On opening it,
they had found the contents to be written in a foreign language,
which they rightly guessed at as Hindustani. Their object in coming
to me was, of course, to have the letter translated to them.
I took a copy in my pocket-book of the original, and of my translation--
and there they are at your service."

He handed me the open pocket-book. The address on the letter
was the first thing copied. It was all written in one paragraph,
without any attempt at punctuation, thus: "To the three Indian men
living with the lady called Macann at Frizinghall in Yorkshire."
The Hindoo characters followed; and the English translation appeared at
the end, expressed in these mysterious words:

"In the name of the Regent of the Night, whose seat is on the Antelope,
whose arms embrace the four corners of the earth.

"Brothers, turn your faces to the south, and come to me in the street
of many noises, which leads down to the muddy river.

"The reason is this.

"My own eyes have seen it."

There the letter ended, without either date or signature.
I handed it back to Mr. Murthwaite, and owned that this curious
specimen of Hindoo correspondence rather puzzled me.

"I can explain the first sentence to you," he said;
"and the conduct of the Indians themselves will explain the rest.
The god of the moon is represented, in the Hindoo mythology,
as a four-armed deity, seated on an antelope; and one of his
titles is the regent of the night. Here, then, to begin with,
is something which looks suspiciously like an indirect reference
to the Moonstone. Now, let us see what the Indians did,
after the prison authorities had allowed them to receive
their letter. On the very day when they were set free
they went at once to the railway station, and took
their places in the first train that started for London.
We all thought it a pity at Frizinghall that their proceedings
were not privately watched. But, after Lady Verinder had
dismissed the police-officer, and had stopped all further
inquiry into the loss of the Diamond, no one else could presume
to stir in the matter. The Indians were free to go to London,
and to London they went. What was the next news we heard of them,
Mr. Bruff?"

"They were annoying Mr. Luker," I answered, "by loitering about the house
at Lambeth."

"Did you read the report of Mr. Luker's application to the magistrate?"

"Yes."

"In the course of his statement he referred, if you remember,
to a foreign workman in his employment, whom he had just dismissed
on suspicion of attempted theft, and whom he also distrusted as
possibly acting in collusion with the Indians who had annoyed him.
The inference is pretty plain, Mr. Bruff, as to who wrote that letter
which puzzled you just now, and as to which of Mr. Luker's Oriental
treasures the workman had attempted to steal."

The inference (as I hastened to acknowledge) was too plain to need
being pointed out. I had never doubted that the Moonstone had found
its way into Mr. Luker's hands, at the time Mr. Murthwaite alluded to.
My only question had been, How had the Indians discovered the circumstance?
This question (the most difficult to deal with of all, as I had thought)
had now received its answer, like the rest. Lawyer as I was, I began
to feel that I might trust Mr. Murthwaite to lead me blindfold through
the last windings of the labyrinth, along which he had guided me thus far.
I paid him the compliment of telling him this, and found my little concession
very graciously received.

"You shall give me a piece of information in your turn before we go on,"
he said. "Somebody must have taken the Moonstone from Yorkshire to London.
And somebody must have raised money on it, or it would never have been
in Mr. Luker's possession. Has there been any discovery made of who that
person was?"

"None that I know of."

"There was a story (was there not?) about Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
I am told he is an eminent philanthropist--which is decidedly against him,
to begin with."

I heartily agreed in this with Mr. Murthwaite. At the same time,
I felt bound to inform him (without, it is needless to say,
mentioning Miss Verinder's name) that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite
had been cleared of all suspicion, on evidence which I could
answer for as entirely beyond dispute.

"Very well," said Mr. Murthwaite, quietly, "let us leave it
to time to clear the matter up. In the meanwhile, Mr. Bruff,
we must get back again to the Indians, on your account.
Their journey to London simply ended in their becoming the victims
of another defeat. The loss of their second chance of seizing
the Diamond is mainly attributable, as I think, to the cunning
and foresight of Mr. Luker--who doesn't stand at the top
of the prosperous and ancient profession of usury for nothing!
By the prompt dismissal of the man in his employment,
he deprived the Indians of the assistance which their
confederate would have rendered them in getting into the house.
By the prompt transport of the Moonstone to his banker's,
he took the conspirators by surprise before they were
prepared with a new plan for robbing him. How the Indians,
in this latter case, suspected what he had done, and how they
contrived to possess themselves of his banker's receipt,
are events too recent to need dwelling on. Let it be enough
to say that they know the Moonstone to be once more out of
their reach; deposited (under the general description of "a valuable
of great price") in a banker's strong room. Now, Mr. Bruff,
what is their third chance of seizing the Diamond? and when will
it come?"

As the question passed his lips, I penetrated the motive of the Indian's
visit to my office at last!

"I see it!"  I exclaimed. "The Indians take it for granted, as we do,
that the Moonstone has been pledged; and they want to be certainly
informed of the earliest period at which the pledge can be redeemed--
because that will be the earliest period at which the Diamond can be removed
from the safe keeping of the bank!"

"I told you you would find it out for yourself, Mr. Bruff,
if I only gave you a fair chance. In a year from the time
when the Moonstone was pledged, the Indians will be on the watch
for their third chance. Mr. Luker's own lips have told them
how long they will have to wait, and your respectable authority
has satisfied them that Mr. Luker has spoken the truth.
When do we suppose, at a rough guess, that the Diamond found
its way into the money-lender's hands?"

"Towards the end of last June," I answered, "as well as I can reckon it."

"And we are now in the year 'forty-eight. Very good.
If the unknown person who has pledged the Moonstone can redeem
it in a year, the jewel will be in that person's possession
again at the end of June, 'forty-nine. I shall be thousands
of miles from England and English news at that date.
But it may be worth YOUR while to take a note of it, and to arrange
to be in London at the time."

"You think something serious will happen?"  I said.

"I think I shall be safer," he answered, "among the fiercest
fanatics of Central Asia than I should be if I crossed
the door of the bank with the Moonstone in my pocket.
The Indians have been defeated twice running, Mr. Bruff.
It's my firm belief that they won't be defeated a third time."

Those were the last words he said on the subject. The coffee came in;
the guests rose, and dispersed themselves about the room; and we joined
the ladies of the dinner-party upstairs.

I made a note of the date, and it may not be amiss if I close my narrative
by repeating that note here:

JUNE, 'FORTY-NINE. EXPECT NEWS OF THE INDIANS, TOWARDS THE END OF THE MONTH.

And that done, I hand the pen, which I have now no further claim to use,
to the writer who follows me next.

                    THIRD NARRATIVE

             Contributed by FRANKLIN BLAKE

CHAPTER I

In the spring of the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine
I was wandering in the East, and had then recently altered
the travelling plans which I had laid out some months before,
and which I had communicated to my lawyer and my banker
in London.

This change made it necessary for me to send one of my servants to obtain my
letters and remittances from the English consul in a certain city, which was
no longer included as one of my resting-places in my new travelling scheme.
The man was to join me again at an appointed place and time. An accident,
for which he was not responsible, delayed him on his errand. For a week I
and my people waited, encamped on the borders of a desert. At the end of that
time the missing man made his appearance, with the money and the letters,
at the entrance of my tent.

"I am afraid I bring you bad news, sir," he said, and pointed
to one of the letters, which had a mourning border round it,
and the address on which was in the handwriting of Mr. Bruff.

I know nothing, in a case of this kind, so unendurable as suspense.
The letter with the mourning border was the letter that I opened first.

It informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir
to his great fortune. The wealth which had thus fallen into
my hands brought its responsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff
entreated me to lose no time in returning to England.

By daybreak the next morning, I was on my way back to my own country.

The picture presented of me, by my old friend Betteredge, at the time
of my departure from England, is (as I think) a little overdrawn.
He has, in his own quaint way, interpreted seriously one of his
young mistress's many satirical references to my foreign education;
and has persuaded himself that he actually saw those French, German,
and Italian sides to my character, which my lively cousin only
professed to discover in jest, and which never had any real existence,
except in our good Betteredge's own brain. But, barring this drawback,
I am bound to own that he has stated no more than the truth
in representing me as wounded to the heart by Rachel's treatment,
and as leaving England in the first keenness of suffering caused by
the bitterest disappointment of my life.

I went abroad, resolved--if change and absence could help me--to forget her.
It is, I am persuaded, no true view of human nature which denies that change
and absence DO help a man under these circumstances; they force his attention
away from the exclusive contemplation of his own sorrow. I never forgot her;
but the pang of remembrance lost its worst bitterness, little by little,
as time, distance, and novelty interposed themselves more and more effectually
between Rachel and me.

On the other hand, it is no less certain that, with the act
of turning homeward, the remedy which had gained its ground
so steadily, began now, just as steadily, to drop back.
The nearer I drew to the country which she inhabited,
and to the prospect of seeing her again, the more irresistibly
her influence began to recover its hold on me. On leaving
England she was the last person in the world whose name I
would have suffered to pass my lips. On returning to England,
she was the first person I inquired after, when Mr. Bruff and I
met again.

I was informed, of course, of all that had happened in my absence;
in other words, of all that has been related here in continuation
of Betteredge's narrative--one circumstance only being excepted.
Mr. Bruff did not, at that time, feel himself at liberty to inform
me of the motives which had privately influenced Rachel and Godfrey
Ablewhite in recalling the marriage promise, on either side.
I troubled him with no embarrassing questions on this delicate subject.
It was relief enough to me, after the jealous disappointment caused
by hearing that she had ever contemplated being Godfrey's wife, to know
that reflection had convinced her of acting rashly, and that she had
effected her own release from her marriage engagement.

Having heard the story of the past, my next inquiries (still inquiries
after Rachel!) advanced naturally to the present time. Under whose care
had she been placed after leaving Mr. Bruff's house? and where was she
living now?

She was living under the care of a widowed sister of the late Sir
John Verinder--one Mrs. Merridew--whom her mother's executors had
requested to act as guardian, and who had accepted the proposal.
They were reported to me as getting on together admirably well,
and as being now established, for the season, in Mrs. Merridew's house
in Portland Place.

Half an hour after receiving this information, I was on my way
to Portland Place--without having had the courage to own it to Mr. Bruff!

The man who answered the door was not sure whether Miss Verinder was at home
or not. I sent him upstairs with my card, as the speediest way of setting
the question at rest. The man came down again with an impenetrable face,
and informed me that Miss Verinder was out.

I might have suspected other people of purposely denying themselves to me.
But it was impossible to suspect Rachel. I left word that I would call again
at six o'clock that evening.

At six o'clock I was informed for the second time that Miss
Verinder was not at home. Had any message been left for me.
No message had been left for me. Had Miss Verinder not received
my card? The servant begged my pardon--Miss Verinder HAD
received it.

The inference was too plain to be resisted. Rachel declined to see me.

On my side, I declined to be treated in this way, without making an attempt,
at least, to discover a reason for it. I sent up my name to Mrs. Merridew,
and requested her to favour me with a personal interview at any hour which it
might be most convenient to her to name.

Mrs. Merridew made no difficulty about receiving me at once.
I was shown into a comfortable little sitting-room, and found
myself in the presence of a comfortable little elderly lady.
She was so good as to feel great regret and much surprise,
entirely on my account. She was at the same time, however,
not in a position to offer me any explanation, or to press
Rachel on a matter which appeared to relate to a question
of private feeling alone. This was said over and over again,
with a polite patience that nothing could tire; and this was
all I gained by applying to Mrs. Merridew.

My last chance was to write to Rachel. My servant took a letter
to her the next day, with strict instructions to wait for an answer.

The answer came back, literally in one sentence.

"Miss Verinder begs to decline entering into any correspondence
with Mr. Franklin Blake."

Fond as I was of her, I felt indignantly the insult offered to me
in that reply. Mr. Bruff came in to speak to me on business,
before I had recovered possession of myself. I dismissed
the business on the spot, and laid the whole case before him.
He proved to be as incapable of enlightening me as Mrs. Merridew herself.
I asked him if any slander had been spoken of me in Rachel's hearing.
Mr. Bruff was not aware of any slander of which I was the object.
Had she referred to me in any way while she was staying
under Mr. Bruff's roof? Never. Had she not so much as asked,
during all my long absence, whether I was living or dead?
No such question had ever passed her lips. I took out of my
pocket-book the letter which poor Lady Verinder had written to me
from Frizinghall, on the day when I left her house in Yorkshire.
And I pointed Mr. Bruff's attention to these two sentences
in it:

"The valuable assistance which you rendered to the inquiry after
the lost jewel is still an unpardoned offence, in the present
dreadful state of Rachel's mind. Moving blindfold in this matter,
you have added to the burden of anxiety which she has had to bear,
by innocently threatening her secret with discovery through
your exertions."

"Is it possible," I asked, "that the feeling towards me which is
there described, is as bitter as ever against me now?"

Mr. Bruff looked unaffectedly distressed.

"If you insist on an answer," he said, "I own I can place
no other interpretation on her conduct than that."

I rang the bell, and directed my servant to pack my portmanteau,
and to send out for a railway guide. Mr. Bruff asked, in astonishment,
what I was going to do.

"I am going to Yorkshire," I answered, "by the next train."

"May I ask for what purpose?"

"Mr. Bruff, the assistance I innocently rendered to the inquiry
after the Diamond was an unpardoned offence, in Rachel's mind,
nearly a year since; and it remains an unpardoned offence still.
I won't accept that position! I am determined to find out the secret
of her silence towards her mother, and her enmity towards me.
If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my hand on the thief who
took the Moonstone!"

The worthy old gentleman attempted to remonstrate--to induce
me to listen to reason--to do his duty towards me, in short.
I was deaf to everything that he could urge. No earthly
consideration would, at that moment, have shaken the resolution
that was in me.

"I shall take up the inquiry again," I went on, "at the point
where I dropped it; and I shall follow it onwards, step by step,
till I come to the present time. There are missing links in
the evidence, as I left it, which Gabriel Betteredge can supply,
and to Gabriel Betteredge I go!"

Towards sunset that evening I stood again on the well-remembered terrace,
and looked once more at the peaceful old country house. The gardener was
the first person whom I saw in the deserted grounds. He had left Betteredge,
an hour since, sunning himself in the customary corner of the back yard.
I knew it well; and I said I would go and seek him myself.

I walked round by the familiar paths and passages, and looked
in at the open gate of the yard.

There he was--the dear old friend of the happy days that were never
to come again--there he was in the old corner, on the old beehive chair,
with his pipe in his mouth, and his ROBINSON CRUSOE on his lap,
and his two friends, the dogs, dozing on either side of him!
In the position in which I stood, my shadow was projected in front
of me by the last slanting rays of the sun. Either the dogs saw it,
or their keen scent informed them of my approach; they started
up with a growl. Starting in his turn, the old man quieted
them by a word, and then shaded his failing eyes with his hand,
and looked inquiringly at the figure at the gate.

My own eyes were full of tears. I was obliged to wait a moment
before I could trust myself to speak to him.

CHAPTER II

"Betteredge!"  I said, pointing to the well-remembered book on his knee,
"has ROBINSON CRUSOE informed you, this evening, that you might expect
to see Franklin Blake?"

"By the lord Harry, Mr. Franklin!" cried the old man, "that's exactly
what ROBINSON CRUSOE has done!"

He struggled to his feet with my assistance, and stood for a moment,
looking backwards and forwards between ROBINSON CRUSOE and me,
apparently at a loss to discover which of us had surprised him most.
The verdict ended in favour of the book. Holding it open before
him in both hands, he surveyed the wonderful volume with a stare
of unutterable anticipation--as if he expected to see Robinson
Crusoe himself walk out of the pages, and favour us with a
personal interview.

"Here's the bit, Mr. Franklin!" he said, as soon as he had
recovered the use of his speech. "As I live by bread, sir,
here's the bit I was reading, the moment before you came in!
Page one hundred and fifty-six as follows:--'I stood like
one Thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an Apparition.'
If that isn't as much as to say: 'Expect the sudden appearance
of Mr. Franklin Blake'--there's no meaning in the English language!"
said Betteredge, closing the book with a bang, and getting
one of his hands free at last to take the hand which I
offered him.

I had expected him, naturally enough under the circumstances,
to overwhelm me with questions. But no--the hospitable
impulse was the uppermost impulse in the old servant's mind,
when a member of the family appeared (no matter how!)
as a visitor at the house.

"Walk in, Mr. Franklin," he said, opening the door behind him,
with his quaint old-fashioned bow. "I'll ask what brings
you here afterwards--I must make you comfortable first.
There have been sad changes, since you went away. The house
is shut up, and the servants are gone. Never mind that!
I'll cook your dinner; and the gardener's wife will make your bed--
and if there's a bottle of our famous Latour claret left in
the cellar, down your throat, Mr. Franklin, that bottle shall go.
I bid you welcome, sir! I bid you heartily welcome!"
said the poor old fellow, fighting manfully against the gloom
of the deserted house, and receiving me with the sociable and
courteous attention of the bygone time.

It vexed me to disappoint him. But the house was Rachel's house, now.
Could I eat in it, or sleep in it, after what had happened in London?
The commonest sense of self-respect forbade me--properly forbade me--
to cross the threshold.

I took Betteredge by the arm, and led him out into the garden.
There was no help for it. I was obliged to tell him the truth.
Between his attachment to Rachel, and his attachment to me,
he was sorely puzzled and distressed at the turn things had taken.
His opinion, when he expressed it, was given in his usual downright manner,
and was agreeably redolent of the most positive philosophy I know--
the philosophy of the Betteredge school.

"Miss Rachel has her faults--I've never denied it," he began.
"And riding the high horse, now and then, is one of them.
She has been trying to ride over you--and you have put up
with it. Lord, Mr. Franklin, don't you know women by this
time better than that? You have heard me talk of the late
Mrs. Betteredge?"

I had heard him talk of the late Mrs. Betteredge pretty often--
invariably producing her as his one undeniable example
of the inbred frailty and perversity of the other sex.
In that capacity he exhibited her now.

"Very well, Mr. Franklin. Now listen to me. Different women have
different ways of riding the high horse. The late Mrs. Betteredge
took her exercise on that favourite female animal whenever I
happened to deny her anything that she had set her heart on.
So sure as I came home form my work on these occasions,
so sure was my wife to call to me up the kitchen stairs,
and to say that, after my brutal treatment of her, she hadn't
the heart to cook me my dinner. I put up with it for some time--
just as you are putting up with it now from Miss Rachel.
At last my patience wore out. I went downstairs, and I
took Mrs. Betteredge--affectionately, you understand--
up in my arms, and carried her, holus-bolus, into the best
parlour where she received her company. I said "That's the right
place for you, my dear," and so went back to the kitchen.
I locked myself in, and took off my coat, and turned up my
shirt-sleeves, and cooked my own dinner. When it was done,
I served it up in my best manner, and enjoyed it most heartily.
I had my pipe and my drop of grog afterwards; and then I cleared
the table, and washed the crockery, and cleaned the knives
and forks, and put the things away, and swept up the hearth.
When things were as bright and clean again, as bright and clean
could be, I opened the door and let Mrs. Betteredge in.
"I've had my dinner, my dear," I said; "and I hope you will find that
I have left the kitchen all that your fondest wishes can desire."
For the rest of that woman's life, Mr. Franklin, I never had to
cook my dinner again! Moral: You have put up with Miss Rachel
in London; don't put up with her in Yorkshire. Come back to
the house!"

Quite unanswerable! I could only assure my good friend that even HIS
powers of persuasion were, in this case, thrown away on me.

"It's a lovely evening," I said. "I shall walk to Frizinghall, and stay
at the hotel, and you must come to-morrow morning and breakfast with me.
I have something to say to you."

Betteredge shook his head gravely.

"I am heartily sorry for this," he said. "I had hoped, Mr. Franklin,
to hear that things were all smooth and pleasant again between you
and Miss Rachel. If you must have your own way, sir," he continued,
after a moment's reflection, "there is no need to go to Frizinghall
to-night for a bed. It's to be had nearer than that.
There's Hotherstone's Farm, barely two miles from here. You can hardly
object to THAT on Miss Rachel's account," the old man added slily.
"Hotherstone lives, Mr. Franklin, on his own freehold."

I remembered the place the moment Betteredge mentioned it.
The farm-house stood in a sheltered inland valley,
on the banks of the prettiest stream in that part of Yorkshire:
and the farmer had a spare bedroom and parlour, which he was
accustomed to let to artists, anglers, and tourists in general.
A more agreeable place of abode, during my stay in the neighbourhood,
I could not have wished to find.

"Are the rooms to let?"  I inquired.

"Mrs. Hotherstone herself, sir, asked for my good word to recommend
the rooms, yesterday."

"I'll take them, Betteredge, with the greatest pleasure."

We went back to the yard, in which I had left my travelling-bag. After
putting a stick through the handle, and swinging the bag over his shoulder,
Betteredge appeared to relapse into the bewilderment which my sudden
appearance had caused, when I surprised him in the beehive chair.
He looked incredulously at the house, and then he wheeled about, and looked
more incredulously still at me.

"I've lived a goodish long time in the world," said this best and dearest
of all old servants--"but the like of this, I never did expect to see.
There stands the house, and here stands Mr. Franklin Blake--and, Damme,
if one of them isn't turning his back on the other, and going to sleep
in a lodging!"

He led the way out, wagging his head and growling ominously.
"There's only one more miracle that CAN happen," he said to me,
over his shoulder. "The next thing you'll do, Mr. Franklin,
will be to pay me back that seven-and-sixpence you borrowed of me
when you were a boy."

This stroke of sarcasm put him in a better humour with himself and with me.
We left the house, and passed through the lodge gates. Once clear of
the grounds, the duties of hospitality (in Betteredge's code of morals)
ceased, and the privileges of curiosity began.

He dropped back, so as to let me get on a level with him.
"Fine evening for a walk, Mr. Franklin," he said, as if we
had just accidentally encountered each other at that moment.
"Supposing you had gone to the hotel at Frizinghall, sir?"

"Yes?"

"I should have had the honour of breakfasting with you,
to-morrow morning."

"Come and breakfast with me at Hotherstone's Farm, instead."

"Much obliged to you for your kindness, Mr. Franklin.
But it wasn't exactly breakfast that I was driving at.
I think you mentioned that you had something to say to me?
If it's no secret, sir," said Betteredge, suddenly abandoning
the crooked way, and taking the straight one, "I'm burning
to know what's brought you down here, if you please, in this
sudden way."

"What brought me here before?"  I asked.

"The Moonstone, Mr. Franklin. But what brings you now, sir?"

"The Moonstone again, Betteredge."

The old man suddenly stood still, and looked at me in the grey twilight
as if he suspected his own ears of deceiving him.

"If that's a joke, sir," he said, "I'm afraid I'm getting a little
dull in my old age. I don't take it."

"It's no joke," I answered. "I have come here to take up the inquiry
which was dropped when I left England. I have come here to do what nobody
has done yet--to find out who took the Diamond."

"Let the Diamond be, Mr. Franklin! Take my advice, and let the Diamond be!
That cursed Indian jewel has misguided everybody who has come near it.
Don't waste your money and your temper--in the fine spring time of
your life, sir--by meddling with the Moonstone. How can YOU hope to succeed
(saving your presence), when Sergeant Cuff himself made a mess of it?
Sergeant Cuff!" repeated Betteredge, shaking his forefinger at me sternly.
"The greatest policeman in England!"

"My mind is made up, my old friend. Even Sergeant Cuff doesn't daunt me.
By-the-bye, I may want to speak to him, sooner or later. Have you heard
anything of him lately?"

"The Sergeant won't help you, Mr. Franklin."

"Why not?"

"There has been an event, sir, in the police-circles, since you went away.
The great Cuff has retired from business. He has got a little
cottage at Dorking; and he's up to his eyes in the growing of roses.
I have it in his own handwriting, Mr. Franklin. He has grown the white
moss rose, without budding it on the dog-rose first. And Mr. Begbie
the gardener is to go to Dorking, and own that the Sergeant has beaten him
at last."

"It doesn't much matter," I said. "I must do without Sergeant Cuff's help.
And I must trust to you, at starting."

It is likely enough that I spoke rather carelessly.

At any rate, Betteredge seemed to be piqued by something in the reply which I
had just made to him. "You might trust to worse than me, Mr. Franklin--
I can tell you that," he said a little sharply.

The tone in which he retorted, and a certain disturbance, after he had spoken,
which I detected in his manner, suggested to me that he was possessed of some
information which he hesitated to communicate.

"I expect you to help me," I said, "in picking up the fragments of evidence
which Sergeant Cuff has left behind him. I know you can do that.
Can you do no more?"

"What more can you expect from me, sir?" asked Betteredge,
with an appearance of the utmost humility.

"I expect more--from what you said just now."

"Mere boasting, Mr. Franklin," returned the old man obstinately.
"Some people are born boasters, and they never get over it to their
dying day. I'm one of them."

There was only one way to take with him. I appealed to his interest
in Rachel, and his interest in me.

"Betteredge, would you be glad to hear that Rachel and I
were good friends again?"

"I have served your family, sir, to mighty little purpose,
if you doubt it!"

"Do you remember how Rachel treated me, before I left England?"

"As well as if it was yesterday! My lady herself wrote you a letter
about it; and you were so good as to show the letter to me.
It said that Miss Rachel was mortally offended with you,
for the part you had taken in trying to recover her jewel.
And neither my lady, nor you, nor anybody else could
guess why.

"Quite true, Betteredge! And I come back from my travels,
and find her mortally offended with me still.
I knew that the Diamond was at the bottom of it, last year,
and I know that the Diamond is at the bottom of it now.
I have tried to speak to her, and she won't see me.
I have tried to write to her, and she won't answer me.
How, in Heaven's name, am I to clear the matter up?
The chance of searching into the loss of the Moonstone,
is the one chance of inquiry that Rachel herself has
left me."

Those words evidently put the case before him, as he had not seen it yet.
He asked a question which satisfied me that I had shaken him.

"There is no ill-feeling in this, Mr. Franklin, on your side--
is there?"

"There was some anger," I answered, "when I left London.
But that is all worn out now. I want to make Rachel come to an
understanding with me--and I want nothing more."

"You don't feel any fear, sir--supposing you make any discoveries--
in regard to what you may find out about Miss Rachel?"

I understood the jealous belief in his young mistress which prompted
those words.

"I am as certain of her as you are," I answered. "The fullest disclosure
of her secret will reveal nothing that can alter her place in your estimation,
or in mine."

Betteredge's last-left scruples vanished at that.

"If I am doing wrong to help you, Mr. Franklin," he exclaimed,
"all I can say is--I am as innocent of seeing it as the babe unborn!
I can put you on the road to discovery, if you can only go on by yourself.
You remember that poor girl of ours--Rosanna Spearman?"

"Of course!"

"You always thought she had some sort of confession in regard to this
matter of the Moonstone, which she wanted to make to you?"

"I certainly couldn't account for her strange conduct in any other way."

"You may set that doubt at rest, Mr. Franklin, whenever you please."

It was my turn to come to a standstill now. I tried vainly,
in the gathering darkness, to see his face. In the surprise
of the moment, I asked a little impatiently what he meant.

"Steady, sir!" proceeded Betteredge. "I mean what I say.
Rosanna Spearman left a sealed letter behind her--a letter
addressed to YOU."

"Where is it?"

"In the possession of a friend of hers, at Cobb's Hole. You must
have heard tell, when you were here last, sir, of Limping Lucy--
a lame girl with a crutch."

"The fisherman's daughter?"

"The same, Mr. Franklin."

"Why wasn't the letter forwarded to me?"

"Limping Lucy has a will of her own, sir. She wouldn't give it
into any hands but yours. And you had left England before I could
write to you."

"Let's go back, Betteredge, and get it at once!"

"Too late, sir, to-night. They're great savers of candles along our coast;
and they go to bed early at Cobb's Hole."

"Nonsense! We might get there in half an hour."

"You might, sir. And when you did get there, you would find the door locked.
He pointed to a light, glimmering below us; and, at the same moment,
I heard through the stillness of the evening the bubbling of a stream.
"There's the Farm, Mr. Franklin! Make yourself comfortable for to-night, and
come to me to-morrow morning if you'll be so kind?"

"You will go with me to the fisherman's cottage?"

"Yes, sir."

"Early?"

"As early, Mr. Franklin, as you like."

We descended the path that led to the Farm.

CHAPTER III

I have only the most indistinct recollection of what happened
at Hotherstone's Farm.

I remember a hearty welcome; a prodigious supper, which would
have fed a whole village in the East; a delightfully clean bedroom,
with nothing in it to regret but that detestable product of the folly
of our fore-fathers--a feather-bed; a restless night, with much
kindling of matches, and many lightings of one little candle;
and an immense sensation of relief when the sun rose, and there was
a prospect of getting up.

It had been arranged over-night with Betteredge, that I was to call for him,
on our way to Cobb's Hole, as early as I liked--which, interpreted by my
impatience to get possession of the letter, meant as early as I could.
Without waiting for breakfast at the Farm, I took a crust of bread in my hand,
and set forth, in some doubt whether I should not surprise the excellent
Betteredge in his bed. To my great relief he proved to be quite as excited
about the coming event as I was. I found him ready, and waiting for me,
with his stick in his hand.

"How are you this morning, Betteredge?"

"Very poorly, sir."

"Sorry to hear it. What do you complain of?"

"I complain of a new disease, Mr. Franklin, of my own inventing.
I don't want to alarm you, but you're certain to catch it before
the morning is out."

"The devil I am!"

"Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach,
sir? and a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet?
It will lay hold of you at Cobb's Hole, Mr. Franklin. I call
it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in the company of
Sergeant Cuff."

"Aye! aye! and the cure in this instance is to open Rosanna Spearman's letter,
I suppose? Come along, and let's get it."

Early as it was, we found the fisherman's wife astir in her kitchen.
On my presentation by Betteredge, good Mrs. Yolland performed
a social ceremony, strictly reserved (as I afterwards learnt)
for strangers of distinction. She put a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple
of clean pipes on the table, and opened the conversation by saying,
"What news from London, sir?"

Before I could find an answer to this immensely comprehensive question,
an apparition advanced towards me, out of a dark corner of the kitchen.
A wan, wild, haggard girl, with remarkably beautiful hair, and with a fierce
keenness in her eyes, came limping up on a crutch to the table at which I
was sitting, and looked at me as if I was an object of mingled interest
and horror, which it quite fascinated her to see.

"Mr. Betteredge," she said, without taking her eyes off me,
"mention his name again, if you please."

"This gentleman's name," answered Betteredge (with a strong
emphasis on GENTLEMAN), "is Mr. Franklin Blake."

The girl turned her back on me, and suddenly left the room.
Good Mrs. Yolland--as I believe--made some apologies for her
daughter's odd behaviour, and Betteredge (probably) translated them
into polite English. I speak of this in complete uncertainty.
My attention was absorbed in following the sound of the girl's crutch.
Thump-thump, up the wooden stairs; thump-thump across the room
above our heads; thump-thump down the stairs again--and there
stood the apparition at the open door, with a letter in its hand,
beckoning me out!

I left more apologies in course of delivery behind me, and followed
this strange creature--limping on before me, faster and faster--
down the slope of the beach. She led me behind some boats,
out of sight and hearing of the few people in the fishing-village,
and then stopped, and faced me for the first time.

"Stand there," she said, "I want to look at you."

There was no mistaking the expression on her face. I inspired
her with the strongest emotions of abhorrence and disgust.
Let me not be vain enough to say that no woman had ever looked
at me in this manner before. I will only venture on the more
modest assertion that no woman had ever let me perceive it yet.
There is a limit to the length of the inspection which a man
can endure, under certain circumstances. I attempted to direct
Limping Lucy's attention to some less revolting object than
my face.

"I think you have got a letter to give me," I began. "Is it the letter there,
in your hand?"

"Say that again," was the only answer I received.

I repeated the words, like a good child learning its lesson.

"No," said the girl, speaking to herself, but keeping her eyes
still mercilessly fixed on me. "I can't find out what she saw
in his face. I can't guess what she heard in his voice."
She suddenly looked away from me, and rested her head wearily
on the top of her crutch. "Oh, my poor dear!" she said,
in the first soft tones which had fallen from her, in my hearing.
"Oh, my lost darling! what could you see in this man?"
She lifted her head again fiercely, and looked at me once more.
"Can you eat and drink?" she asked.

I did my best to preserve my gravity, and answered, "Yes."

"Can you sleep?"

"Yes."

"When you see a poor girl in service, do you feel no remorse?"

"Certainly not. Why should I?"

She abruptly thrust the letter (as the phrase is) into my face.

"Take it!" she exclaimed furiously. "I never set eyes on you before.
God Almighty forbid I should ever set eyes on you again."

With those parting words she limped away from me at the top of her speed.
The one interpretation that I could put on her conduct has, no doubt,
been anticipated by everybody. I could only suppose that she was mad.

Having reached that inevitable conclusion, I turned to the more
interesting object of investigation which was presented to me
by Rosanna Spearman's letter. The address was written as
follows:--'For Franklin Blake, Esq. To be given into his own hands
(and not to be trusted to any one else), by Lucy Yolland."

I broke the seal. The envelope contained a letter: and this, in its turn,
contained a slip of paper. I read the letter first:--

"Sir,--If you are curious to know the meaning of my behaviour to you,
whilst you were staying in the house of my mistress, Lady Verinder,
do what you are told to do in the memorandum enclosed with this--
and do it without any person being present to overlook you.
Your humble servant,

"ROSANNA SPEARMAN."

I turned to the slip of paper next. Here is the literal copy of it,
word for word:

"Memorandum:--To go to the Shivering Sand at the turn of the tide.
To walk out on the South Spit, until I get the South Spit Beacon,
and the flagstaff at the Coast-guard station above Cobb's Hole in a
line together. To lay down on the rocks, a stick, or any straight thing
to guide my hand, exactly in the line of the beacon and the flagstaff.
To take care, in doing this, that one end of the stick shall be at
the edge of the rocks, on the side of them which overlooks the quicksand.
To feel along the stick, among the sea-weed (beginning from the end
of the stick which points towards the beacon), for the Chain.
To run my hand along the Chain, when found, until I come to the part of it
which stretches over the edge of the rocks, down into the quicksand.
AND THEN TO PULL THE CHAIN."

Just as I had read the last words--underlined in the original--
I heard the voice of Betteredge behind me. The inventor of the
detective-fever had completely succumbed to that irresistible malady.
"I can't stand it any longer, Mr. Franklin. What does her letter say?
For mercy's sake, sir, tell us, what does her letter say?"

I handed him the letter, and the memorandum. He read the first without
appearing to be much interested in it. But the second--the memorandum--
produced a strong impression on him.

"The Sergeant said it!" cried Betteredge. "From first to last, sir,
the Sergeant said she had got a memorandum of the hiding-place.
And here it is! Lord save us, Mr. Franklin, here is the secret
that puzzled everybody, from the great Cuff downwards,
ready and waiting, as one may say, to show itself to YOU!
It's the ebb now, sir, as anybody may see for themselves.
How long will it be till the turn of the tide?"  He looked up,
and observed a lad at work, at some little distance from us,
mending a net. "Tammie Bright!" he shouted at the top of
his voice.

"I hear you!"  Tammie shouted back.

"When's the turn of the tide?"

"In an hour's time."

We both looked at our watches.

"We can go round by the coast, Mr. Franklin," said Betteredge;
"and get to the quicksand in that way with plenty of time to spare.
What do you say, sir?"

"Come along!"

On our way to the Shivering Sand, I applied to Betteredge to revive
my memory of events (as affecting Rosanna Spearman) at the period
of Sergeant Cuff's inquiry. With my old friend's help, I soon
had the succession of circumstances clearly registered in my mind.
Rosanna's journey to Frizinghall, when the whole household believed
her to be ill in her own room--Rosanna's mysterious employment
of the night-time with her door locked, and her candle burning till
the morning--Rosanna's suspicious purchase of the japanned tin case,
and the two dog's chains from Mrs. Yolland--the Sergeant's positive
conviction that Rosanna had hidden something at the Shivering Sand,
and the Sergeant's absolute ignorance as to what that something might be--
all these strange results of the abortive inquiry into the loss
of the Moonstone were clearly present to me again, when we reached
the quicksand, and walked out together on the low ledge of rocks called
the South Spit.

With Betteredge's help, I soon stood in the right position to see
the Beacon and the Coast-guard flagstaff in a line together.
Following the memorandum as our guide, we next laid my stick
in the necessary direction, as neatly as we could, on the uneven
surface of the rocks. And then we looked at our watches
once more.

It wanted nearly twenty minutes yet of the turn of the tide.
I suggested waiting through this interval on the beach,
instead of on the wet and slippery surface of the rocks.
Having reached the dry sand, I prepared to sit down; and, greatly to
my surprise, Betteredge prepared to leave me.

"What are you going away for?"  I asked.

"Look at the letter again, sir, and you will see."

A glance at the letter reminded me that I was charged, when I made
my discovery, to make it alone.

"It's hard enough for me to leave you, at such a time as this,"
said Betteredge. "But she died a dreadful death, poor soul--
and I feel a kind of call on me, Mr. Franklin, to humour that fancy
of hers. Besides," he added, confidentially, "there's nothing
in the letter against your letting out the secret afterwards.
I'll hang about in the fir plantation, and wait till you pick me up.
Don't be longer than you can help, sir. The detective-fever isn't an easy
disease to deal with, under THESE circumstances."

With that parting caution, he left me.

The interval of expectation, short as it was when reckoned by the measure
of time, assumed formidable proportions when reckoned by the measure
of suspense. This was one of the occasions on which the invaluable habit
of smoking becomes especially precious and consolatory. I lit a cigar,
and sat down on the slope of the beach.

The sunlight poured its unclouded beauty on every object that I could see.
The exquisite freshness of the air made the mere act of living and breathing
a luxury. Even the lonely little bay welcomed the morning with a show
of cheerfulness; and the bared wet surface of the quicksand itself,
glittering with a golden brightness, hid the horror of its false brown face
under a passing smile. It was the finest day I had seen since my return
to England.

The turn of the tide came, before my cigar was finished.
I saw the preliminary heaving of the Sand, and then the awful
shiver that crept over its surface--as if some spirit of terror
lived and moved and shuddered in the fathomless deeps beneath.
I threw away my cigar, and went back again to the rocks.

My directions in the memorandum instructed me to feel along the line traced
by the stick, beginning with the end which was nearest to the beacon.

I advanced, in this manner, more than half way along the stick,
without encountering anything but the edges of the rocks.
An inch or two further on, however, my patience was rewarded.
In a narrow little fissure, just within reach of my forefinger,
I felt the chain. Attempting, next, to follow it, by touch,
in the direction of the quicksand, I found my progress stopped by a
thick growth of seaweed--which had fastened itself into the fissure,
no doubt, in the time that had elapsed since Rosanna Spearman had
chosen her hiding-place.

It was equally impossible to pull up the seaweed, or to force
my hand through it. After marking the spot indicated by the end
of the stick which was placed nearest to the quicksand,
I determined to pursue the search for the chain on a plan
of my own. My idea was to "sound" immediately under the rocks,
on the chance of recovering the lost trace of the chain at
the point at which it entered the sand. I took up the stick,
and knelt down on the brink of the South Spit.

In this position, my face was within a few feet of the surface
of the quicksand. The sight of it so near me, still disturbed
at intervals by its hideous shivering fit, shook my nerves
for the moment. A horrible fancy that the dead woman might
appear on the scene of her suicide, to assist my search--
an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the heaving
surface of the sand, and point to the place--forced itself
into my mind, and turned me cold in the warm sunlight.
I own I closed my eyes at the moment when the point of the stick
first entered the quicksand.

The instant afterwards, before the stick could have been submerged more
than a few inches, I was free from the hold of my own superstitious terror,
and was throbbing with excitement from head to foot. Sounding blindfold,
at my first attempt--at that first attempt I had sounded right! The stick
struck the chain.

Taking a firm hold of the roots of the seaweed with my left hand,
I laid myself down over the brink, and felt with my right hand
under the overhanging edges of the rock. My right hand found
the chain.

I drew it up without the slightest difficulty. And there was the japanned
tin case fastened to the end of it.

The action of the water had so rusted the chain, that it was impossible
for me to unfasten it from the hasp which attached it to the case.
Putting the case between my knees and exerting my utmost strength,
I contrived to draw off the cover. Some white substance filled the whole
interior when I looked in. I put in my hand, and found it to be linen.

In drawing out the linen, I also drew out a letter crumpled up with it.
After looking at the direction, and discovering that it bore my name,
I put the letter in my pocket, and completely removed the linen.
It came out in a thick roll, moulded, of course, to the shape of the case
in which it had been so long confined, and perfectly preserved from any injury
by the sea.

I carried the linen to the dry sand of the beach, and there unrolled
and smoothed it out. There was no mistaking it as an article of dress.
It was a nightgown.

The uppermost side, when I spread it out, presented to
view innumerable folds and creases, and nothing more.
I tried the undermost side, next--and instantly discovered
the smear of the paint from the door of Rachel's boudoir!

My eyes remained riveted on the stain, and my mind took me back at a leap
from present to past. The very words of Sergeant Cuff recurred to me,
as if the man himself was at my side again, pointing to the unanswerable
inference which he drew from the smear on the door.

"Find out whether there is any article of dress in this house
with the stain of paint on it. Find out who that dress belongs to.
Find out how the person can account for having been in the room,
and smeared the paint between midnight and three in the morning.
If the person can't satisfy you, you haven't far to look for the hand that
took the Diamond."

One after another those words travelled over my memory,
repeating themselves again and again with a wearisome,
mechanical reiteration. I was roused from what felt like a
trance of many hours--from what was really, no doubt, the pause
of a few moments only--by a voice calling to me. I looked up,
and saw that Betteredge's patience had failed him at last.
He was just visible between the sandhills, returning to
the beach.

The old man's appearance recalled me, the moment I perceived it,
to my sense of present things, and reminded me that the inquiry
which I had pursued thus far still remained incomplete.
I had discovered the smear on the nightgown. To whom did
the nightgown belong?

My first impulse was to consult the letter in my pocket--
the letter which I had found in the case.

As I raised my hand to take it out, I remembered that there
was a shorter way to discovery than this. The nightgown
itself would reveal the truth, for, in all probability,
the nightgown was marked with its owner's name.

I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.

I found the mark, and read--

MY OWN NAME.

There were the familiar letters which told me that the nightgown was mine.
I looked up from them. There was the sun; there were the glittering waters
of the bay; there was old Betteredge, advancing nearer and nearer to me.
I looked back again at the letters. My own name. Plainly confronting me--
my own name.

"If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my hand on the thief
who took the Moonstone."--I had left London, with those words on my lips.
I had penetrated the secret which the quicksand had kept from every other
living creature. And, on the unanswerable evidence of the paint-stain, I
had discovered Myself as the Thief.

CHAPTER IV

I have not a word to say about my own sensations.

My impression is that the shock inflicted on me completely
suspended my thinking and feeling power. I certainly could
not have known what I was about when Betteredge joined me--
for I have it on his authority that I laughed, when he asked
what was the matter, and putting the nightgown into his hands,
told him to read the riddle for himself.

Of what was said between us on the beach, I have not
the faintest recollection. The first place in which I can
now see myself again plainly is the plantation of firs.
Betteredge and I are walking back together to the house;
and Betteredge is telling me that I shall be able to face it,
and he will be able to face it, when we have had a glass
of grog.

The scene shifts from the plantation, to Betteredge's little
sitting-room. My resolution not to enter Rachel's house is forgotten.
I feel gratefully the coolness and shadiness and quiet of the room.
I drink the grog (a perfectly new luxury to me, at that time of day),
which my good old friend mixes with icy-cold water from the well.
Under any other circumstances, the drink would simply stupefy me.
As things are, it strings up my nerves. I begin to "face it,"
as Betteredge has predicted. And Betteredge, on his side, begins to
"face it," too.

The picture which I am now presenting of myself, will, I suspect,
be thought a very strange one, to say the least of it.
Placed in a situation which may, I think, be described as entirely
without parallel, what is the first proceeding to which I resort?
Do I seclude myself from all human society? Do I set my mind
to analyse the abominable impossibility which, nevertheless,
confronts me as an undeniable fact? Do I hurry back to London
by the first train to consult the highest authorities,
and to set a searching inquiry on foot immediately?
No. I accept the shelter of a house which I had resolved
never to degrade myself by entering again; and I sit,
tippling spirits and water in the company of an old servant,
at ten o'clock in the morning. Is this the conduct that might
have been expected from a man placed in my horrible position?
I can only answer that the sight of old Betteredge's familiar
face was an inexpressible comfort to me, and that the drinking
of old Betteredge's grog helped me, as I believe nothing else
would have helped me, in the state of complete bodily and mental
prostration into which I had fallen. I can only offer this
excuse for myself; and I can only admire that invariable
preservation of dignity, and that strictly logical consistency
of conduct which distinguish every man and woman who may read
these lines, in every emergency of their lives from the cradle to
the grave.

"Now, Mr. Franklin, there's one thing certain, at any rate,"
said Betteredge, throwing the nightgown down on the table between us,
and pointing to it as if it was a living creature that could hear him.
"HE'S a liar, to begin with."

This comforting view of the matter was not the view that presented
itself to my mind.

"I am as innocent of all knowledge of having taken the Diamond as you are,"
I said. "But there is the witness against me! The paint on the nightgown,
and the name on the nightgown are facts."

Betteredge lifted my glass, and put it persuasively into my hand.

"Facts?" he repeated. "Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin,
and you'll get over the weakness of believing in facts!
Foul play, sir!" he continued, dropping his voice confidentially.
"That is how I read the riddle. Foul play somewhere--and you
and I must find it out. Was there nothing else in the tin case,
when you put your hand into it?"

The question instantly reminded me of the letter in my pocket.
I took it out, and opened it. It was a letter of many pages,
closely written. I looked impatiently for the signature at the end.
"Rosanna Spearman."

As I read the name, a sudden remembrance illuminated my mind,
and a sudden suspicion rose out of the new light.

"Stop!"  I exclaimed. "Rosanna Spearman came to my aunt out
of a reformatory? Rosanna Spearman had once been a thief?"

"There's no denying that, Mr. Franklin. What of it now,
if you please?"

"What of it now? How do we know she may not have stolen the Diamond
after all? How do we know she may not have smeared my nightgown
purposely with the paint?"

Betteredge laid his hand on my arm, and stopped me before I could
say any more.

"You will be cleared of this, Mr. Franklin, beyond all doubt.
But I hope you won't be cleared in THAT way. See what
the letter says, sir. In justice to the girl's memory,
see what it says."

I felt the earnestness with which he spoke--felt it as a friendly rebuke
to me. "You shall form your own judgment on her letter," I said.
"I will read it out."

I began--and read these lines:

"Sir--I have something to own to you. A confession which means much misery,
may sometimes be made in very few words. This confession can be made in
three words. I love you.

The letter dropped from my hand. I looked at Betteredge.
"In the name of Heaven," I said, "what does it mean?"

He seemed to shrink from answering the question.

"You and Limping Lucy were alone together this morning, sir, he said.
"Did she say nothing about Rosanna Spearman?"

"She never even mentioned Rosanna Spearman's name."

"Please to go back to the letter, Mr. Franklin. I tell you plainly,
I can't find it in my heart to distress you, after what you have had to
bear already. Let her speak for herself, sir. And get on with your grog.
For your own sake, get on with your grog."

I resumed the reading of the letter.

"It would be very disgraceful to me to tell you this, if I was a living woman
when you read it. I shall be dead and gone, sir, when you find my letter.
It is that which makes me bold. Not even my grave will be left to tell
of me. I may own the truth--with the quicksand waiting to hide me when the
words are written.

"Besides, you will find your nightgown in my hiding-place,
with the smear of the paint on it; and you will want to know
how it came to be hidden by me? and why I said nothing to you
about it in my life-time? I have only one reason to give.
I did these strange things, because I loved you.

"I won't trouble you with much about myself, or my life,
before you came to my lady's house. Lady Verinder took me
out of a reformatory. I had gone to the reformatory from
the prison. I was put in the prison, because I was a thief.
I was a thief, because my mother went on the streets when I
was quite a little girl. My mother went on the streets,
because the gentleman who was my father deserted her.
There is no need to tell such a common story as this, at any length.
It is told quite often enough in the newspapers.

"Lady Verinder was very kind to me, and Mr. Betteredge was very kind to me.
Those two, and the matron at the reformatory, are the only good people
I have ever met with in all my life. I might have got on in my place--
not happily--but I might have got on, if you had not come visiting.
I don't blame you, sir. It's my fault--all my fault.

"Do you remember when you came out on us from among the sand hills,
that morning, looking for Mr. Betteredge? You were like a
prince in a fairy-story. You were like a lover in a dream.
You were the most adorable human creature I had ever seen.
Something that felt like the happy life I had never led yet,
leapt up in me at the instant I set eyes on you. Don't laugh
at this if you can help it. Oh, if I could only make you feel how
serious it is to ME!

"I went back to the house, and wrote your name and mine in my work-box,
and drew a true lovers' knot under them. Then, some devil--no, I ought
to say some good angel--whispered to me, "Go and look in the glass."
The glass told me--never mind what. I was too foolish to take the warning.
I went on getting fonder and fonder of you, just as if I was a lady in your
own rank of life, and the most beautiful creature your eyes ever rested on.
I tried--oh, dear, how I tried--to get you to look at me. If you had
known how I used to cry at night with the misery and the mortification
of your never taking any notice of me, you would have pitied me perhaps,
and have given me a look now and then to live on.

"It would have been no very kind look, perhaps, if you had known how I hated
Miss Rachel. I believe I found out you were in love with her, before you knew
it yourself. She used to give you roses to wear in your button-hole. Ah,
Mr. Franklin, you wore my roses oftener than either you or she thought!
The only comfort I had at that time, was putting my rose secretly in your
glass of water, in place of hers--and then throwing her rose away.

"If she had been really as pretty as you thought her,
I might have borne it better. No; I believe I should have
been more spiteful against her still. Suppose you put Miss
Rachel into a servant's dress, and took her ornaments off?
I don't know what is the use of my writing in this way.
It can't be denied that she had a bad figure; she was too thin.
But who can tell what the men like? And young ladies may
behave in a manner which would cost a servant her place.
It's no business of mine. I can't expect you to read
my letter, if I write it in this way. But it does stir
one up to hear Miss Rachel called pretty, when one knows
all the time that it's her dress does it, and her confidence
in herself.

"Try not to lose patience with me, sir. I will get on as fast as I can
to the time which is sure to interest you--the time when the Diamond
was lost.

"But there is one thing which I have got it on my mind to tell you first.

"My life was not a very hard life to bear, while I was a thief.
It was only when they had taught me at the reformatory to feel
my own degradation, and to try for better things, that the days
grew long and weary. Thoughts of the future forced themselves
on me now. I felt the dreadful reproach that honest people--
even the kindest of honest people--were to me in themselves.
A heart-breaking sensation of loneliness kept with me, go where
I might, and do what I might, and see what persons I might.
It was my duty, I know, to try and get on with my fellow-servants
in my new place. Somehow, I couldn't make friends with them.
They looked (or I thought they looked) as if they suspected
what I had been. I don't regret, far from it, having been
roused to make the effort to be a reformed woman--but, indeed,
indeed it was a weary life. You had come across it like a beam
of sunshine at first--and then you too failed me. I was mad
enough to love you; and I couldn't even attract your notice.
There was great misery--there really was great misery
in that.

"Now I am coming to what I wanted to tell you. In those days
of bitterness, I went two or three times, when it was my turn to
go out, to my favourite place--the beach above the Shivering Sand.
And I said to myself, "I think it will end here. When I can bear
it no longer, I think it will end here."  You will understand, sir,
that the place had laid a kind of spell on me before you came.
I had always had a notion that something would happen to me at
the quicksand. But I had never looked at it, with the thought
of its being the means of my making away with myself, till the time
came of which I am now writing. Then I did think that here was
a place which would end all my troubles for me in a moment or two--
and hide me for ever afterwards.

"This is all I have to say about myself, reckoning from the morning
when I first saw you, to the morning when the alarm was raised
in the house that the Diamond was lost.

"I was so aggravated by the foolish talk among the women servants,
all wondering who was to be suspected first; and I was so angry with you
(knowing no better at that time) for the pains you took in hunting for
the jewel, and sending for the police, that I kept as much as possible away
by myself, until later in the day, when the officer from Frizinghall came
to the house.

"Mr. Seegrave began, as you may remember, by setting a guard
on the women's bedrooms; and the women all followed him up-stairs
in a rage, to know what he meant by the insult he had put on them.
I went with the rest, because if I had done anything different
from the rest, Mr. Seegrave was the sort of man who would have
suspected me directly. We found him in Miss Rachel's room.
He told us he wouldn't have a lot of women there;
and he pointed to the smear on the painted door, and said
some of our petticoats had done the mischief, and sent us all
down-stairs again.

"After leaving Miss Rachel's room, I stopped a moment on one of the landings,
by myself, to see if I had got the paint-stain by any chance on MY gown.
Penelope Betteredge (the only one of the women with whom I was on
friendly terms) passed, and noticed what I was about.

"'You needn't trouble yourself, Rosanna,' she said.
'The paint on Miss Rachel's door has been dry for hours.
If Mr. Seegrave hadn't set a watch on our bedrooms,
I might have told him as much. I don't know what you think--
I was never so insulted before in my life!'

"Penelope was a hot-tempered girl. I quieted her, and brought her back
to what she had said about the paint on the door having been dry for hours.

"'How do you know that?'  I asked.

"'I was with Miss Rachel, and Mr. Franklin, all yesterday morning,'
Penelope said, 'mixing the colours, while they finished the door.
I heard Miss Rachel ask whether the door would be dry that evening,
in time for the birthday company to see it. And Mr. Franklin shook
his head, and said it wouldn't be dry in less than twelve hours.
It was long past luncheon-time--it was three o'clock before they had done.
What does your arithmetic say, Rosanna? Mine says the door was dry by
three this morning.'

"'Did some of the ladies go up-stairs yesterday evening to see it?'
I asked. 'I thought I heard Miss Rachel warning them to keep clear
of the door.'

"'None of the ladies made the smear,' Penelope answered.
'I left Miss Rachel in bed at twelve last night. And I noticed
the door, and there was nothing wrong with it then.'

"'Oughtn't you to mention this to Mr. Seegrave, Penelope?'

"'I wouldn't say a word to help Mr. Seegrave for anything that could
be offered to me!'

"She went to her work, and I went to mine."

"My work, sir, was to make your bed, and to put your room tidy.
It was the happiest hour I had in the whole day. I used
to kiss the pillow on which your head had rested all night.
No matter who has done it since, you have never had your
clothes folded as nicely as I folded them for you.
Of all the little knick-knacks in your dressing-case,
there wasn't one that had so much as a speck on it.
You never noticed it, any more than you noticed me. I beg
your pardon; I am forgetting myself. I will make haste, and go
on again.

"Well, I went in that morning to do my work in your room.
There was your nightgown tossed across the bed, just as you
had thrown it off. I took it up to fold it--and I saw the stain
of the paint from Miss Rachel's door!

"I was so startled by the discovery that I ran out with the nightgown in
my hand, and made for the back stairs, and locked myself into my own room,
to look at it in a place where nobody could intrude and interrupt me.

"As soon as I got my breath again, I called to mind my talk with Penelope,
and I said to myself, "Here's the proof that he was in Miss Rachel's
sitting-room between twelve last night, and three this morning!"

"I shall not tell you in plain words what was the first
suspicion that crossed my mind, when I had made that discovery.
You would only be angry--and, if you were angry, you might tear
my letter up and read no more of it.

"Let it be enough, if you please, to say only this.
After thinking it over to the best of my ability, I made it out
that the thing wasn't likely, for a reason that I will tell you.
If you had been in Miss Rachel's sitting-room, at that time
of night, with Miss Rachel's knowledge (and if you had been
foolish enough to forget to take care of the wet door) SHE would
have reminded you--SHE would never have let you carry away such
a witness against her, as the witness I was looking at now!
At the same time, I own I was not completely certain in my
own mind that I had proved my own suspicion to be wrong.
You will not have forgotten that I have owned to hating Miss Rachel.
Try to think, if you can, that there was a little of that hatred
in all this. It ended in my determining to keep the nightgown,
and to wait, and watch, and see what use I might make of it.
At that time, please to remember, not the ghost of an idea
entered my head that you had stolen the Diamond."

There, I broke off in the reading of the letter for the second time.

I had read those portions of the miserable woman's confession
which related to myself, with unaffected surprise, and, I can
honestly add, with sincere distress. I had regretted,
truly regretted, the aspersion which I had thoughtlessly
cast on her memory, before I had seen a line of her letter.
But when I had advanced as far as the passage which is quoted above,
I own I felt my mind growing bitterer and bitterer against
Rosanna Spearman as I went on. "Read the rest for yourself,"
I said, handing the letter to Betteredge across the table.
"If there is anything in it that I must look at, you can tell me
as you go on."

"I understand you, Mr. Franklin," he answered. "It's natural, sir, in YOU.
And, God help us all!" he added, in a lower tone, "it's no less natural
in HER."

I proceed to copy the continuation of the letter from the original,
in my own possession:--

"Having determined to keep the nightgown, and to see what use my love,
or my revenge (I hardly know which) could turn it to in the future,
the next thing to discover was how to keep it without the risk of being
found out.

"There was only one way--to make another nightgown exactly like it,
before Saturday came, and brought the laundry-woman and her inventory
to the house

"I was afraid to put it off till next day (the Friday);
being in doubt lest some accident might happen in the interval.
I determined to make the new nightgown on that same day
(the Thursday), while I could count, if I played my cards properly,
on having my time to myself. The first thing to do
(after locking up your nightgown in my drawer) was to go
back to your bed-room--not so much to put it to rights
(Penelope would have done that for me, if I had asked her)
as to find out whether you had smeared off any of the paint-stain
from your nightgown, on the bed, or on any piece of furniture in
the room.

"I examined everything narrowly, and at last, I found a few
streaks of the paint on the inside of your dressing-gown--
not the linen dressing-gown you usually wore in that summer season,
but a flannel dressing-gown which you had with you also.
I suppose you felt chilly after walking to and fro in nothing
but your nightdress, and put on the warmest thing you could find.
At any rate, there were the stains, just visible, on the inside
of the dressing-gown. I easily got rid of these by scraping
away the stuff of the flannel. This done, the only proof left
against you was the proof locked up in my drawer.

"I had just finished your room when I was sent for to be questioned
by Mr. Seegrave, along with the rest of the servants. Next came
the examination of all our boxes. And then followed the most extraordinary
event of the day--to ME--since I had found the paint on your nightgown.
This event came out of the second questioning of Penelope Betteredge
by Superintendent Seegrave.

"Penelope returned to us quite beside herself with rage
at the manner in which Mr. Seegrave had treated her.
He had hinted, beyond the possibility of mistaking him,
that he suspected her of being the thief. We were all equally
astonished at hearing this, and we all asked, Why?

"'Because the Diamond was in Miss Rachel's sitting-room," Penelope answered.
"And because I was the last person in the sitting-room at night!"

"Almost before the words had left her lips, I remembered that another person
had been in the sitting-room later than Penelope. That person was yourself.
My head whirled round, and my thoughts were in dreadful confusion.
In the midst of it all, something in my mind whispered to me that the smear on
your nightgown might have a meaning entirely different to the meaning which I
had given to it up to that time. "If the last person who was in the room is
the person to be suspected," I thought to myself, "the thief is not Penelope,
but Mr. Franklin Blake!"

"In the case of any other gentleman, I believe I should have been
ashamed of suspecting him of theft, almost as soon as the suspicion
had passed through my mind.

"But the bare thought that YOU had let yourself down to my level,
and that I, in possessing myself of your nightgown, had also possessed
myself of the means of shielding you from being discovered,
and disgraced for life--I say, sir, the bare thought of this seemed
to open such a chance before me of winning your good will, that I
passed blindfold, as one may say, from suspecting to believing.
I made up my mind, on the spot, that you had shown yourself the busiest
of anybody in fetching the police, as a blind to deceive us all;
and that the hand which had taken Miss Rachel's jewel could by no
possibility be any other hand than yours.

"The excitement of this new discovery of mine must, I think,
have turned my head for a while. I felt such a devouring eagerness
to see you--to try you with a word or two about the Diamond,
and to MAKE you look at me, and speak to me, in that way--
that I put my hair tidy, and made myself as nice as I could,
and went to you boldly in the library where I knew you
were writing.

"You had left one of your rings up-stairs, which made
as good an excuse for my intrusion as I could have desired.
But, oh, sir! if you have ever loved, you will understand how it
was that all my courage cooled, when I walked into the room,
and found myself in your presence. And then, you looked up
at me so coldly, and you thanked me for finding your ring
in such an indifferent manner, that my knees trembled under me,
and I felt as if I should drop on the floor at your feet.
When you had thanked me, you looked back, if you remember,
at your writing. I was so mortified at being treated
in this way, that I plucked up spirit enough to speak.
I said, 'This is a strange thing about the Diamond, sir.'
And you looked up again, and said, 'Yes, it is!'
You spoke civilly (I can't deny that); but still you kept
a distance--a cruel distance between us. Believing, as I did,
that you had got the lost Diamond hidden about you, while you
were speaking, your coolness so provoked me that I got
bold enough, in the heat of the moment, to give you a hint.
I said, 'They will never find the Diamond, sir, will they?
No! nor the person who took it--I'll answer for that.'
I nodded, and smiled at you, as much as to say, 'I know!'
THIS time, you looked up at me with something like interest
in your eyes; and I felt that a few more words on your side
and mine might bring out the truth. Just at that moment,
Mr. Betteredge spoilt it all by coming to the door.
I knew his footstep, and I also knew that it was against
his rules for me to be in the library at that time of day--
let alone being there along with you. I had only just time to get
out of my own accord, before he could come in and tell me to go.
I was angry and disappointed; but I was not entirely without
hope for all that. The ice, you see, was broken between us--
and I thought I would take care, on the next occasion,
that Mr. Betteredge was out of the way.

"When I got back to the servants' hall, the bell was going for our dinner.
Afternoon already! and the materials for making the new nightgown were
still to be got! There was but one chance of getting them. I shammed ill
at dinner; and so secured the whole of the interval from then till tea-time
to my own use.

"What I was about, while the household believed me to be lying down
in my own room; and how I spent the night, after shamming ill again at
tea-time, and having been sent up to bed, there is no need to tell you.
Sergeant Cuff discovered that much, if he discovered nothing more.
And I can guess how. I was detected (though I kept my veil down)
in the draper's shop at Frizinghall. There was a glass in front of me,
at the counter where I was buying the longcloth; and--in that glass--
I saw one of the shopmen point to my shoulder and whisper to another.
At night again, when I was secretly at work, locked into my room,
I heard the breathing of the women servants who suspected me, outside my
door.

"It didn't matter then; it doesn't matter now. On the Friday morning,
hours before Sergeant Cuff entered the house, there was the new nightgown--
to make up your number in place of the nightgown that I had got--
made, wrung out, dried, ironed, marked, and folded as the laundry woman
folded all the others, safe in your drawer. There was no fear (if the linen
in the house was examined) of the newness of the nightgown betraying me.
All your underclothing had been renewed, when you came to our house--
I suppose on your return home from foreign parts.

"The next thing was the arrival of Sergeant Cuff; and the next great surprise
was the announcement of what HE thought about the smear on the door.

"I had believed you to be guilty (as I have owned), more
because I wanted you to be guilty than for any other reason.
And now, the Sergeant had come round by a totally different way
to the same conclusion (respecting the nightgown) as mine!
And I had got the dress that was the only proof against you!
And not a living creature knew it--yourself included! I am afraid
to tell you how I felt when I called these things to mind--you would
hate my memory for ever afterwards."

At that place, Betteredge looked up from the letter.

"Not a glimmer of light so far, Mr. Franklin," said the old man,
taking off his heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, and pushing
Rosanna Spearman's confession a little away from him.
"Have you come to any conclusion, sir, in your own mind, while I
have been reading?"

"Finish the letter first, Betteredge; there may be something to enlighten us
at the end of it. I shall have a word or two to say to you after that."

"Very good, sir. I'll just rest my eyes, and then I'll go on again.
In the meantime, Mr. Franklin--I don't want to hurry you--but would you
mind telling me, in one word, whether you see your way out of this dreadful
mess yet?"

"I see my way back to London," I said, "to consult Mr. Bruff.
If he can't help me----"

"Yes, sir?"

"And if the Sergeant won't leave his retirement at Dorking----"

"He won't, Mr. Franklin!"

"Then, Betteredge--as far as I can see now--I am at the end of my resources.
After Mr. Bruff and the Sergeant, I don't know of a living creature who can be
of the slightest use to me."

As the words passed my lips, some person outside knocked at the door
of the room.

Betteredge looked surprised as well as annoyed by the interruption.

"Come in," he called out, irritably, "whoever you are!"

The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most
remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him
by his figure and his movements, he was still young.
Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge,
he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a
gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows,
over which the bone projected like a pent-house. His nose
presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among
the ancient people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer
races of the West. His forehead rose high and straight
from the brow. His marks and wrinkles were innumerable.
From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown--
eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits--
looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your attention
captive at their will. Add to this a quantity of thick
closely-curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature, had lost
its colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner.
Over the top of his head it was still of the deep black
which was its natural colour. Round the sides of his head--
without the slightest gradation of grey to break the force
of the extraordinary contrast--it had turned completely white.
The line between the two colours preserved no sort of regularity.
At one place, the white hair ran up into the black;
at another, the black hair ran down into the white.
I looked at the man with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say,
I found it quite impossible to control. His soft brown eyes
looked back at me gently; and he met my involuntary rudeness
in staring at him, with an apology which I was conscious that I had
not deserved.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I had no idea that Mr. Betteredge
was engaged."  He took a slip of paper from his pocket,
and handed it to Betteredge. "The list for next week," he said.
His eyes just rested on me again--and he left the room as quietly
as he had entered it.

"Who is that?"  I asked.

"Mr. Candy's assistant," said Betteredge. "By-the-bye, Mr. Franklin,
you will be sorry to hear that the little doctor has never recovered
that illness he caught, going home from the birthday dinner.
He's pretty well in health; but he lost his memory in the fever,
and he has never recovered more than the wreck of it since.
The work all falls on his assistant. Not much of it now, except among
the poor. THEY can't help themselves, you know. THEY must put
up with the man with the piebald hair, and the gipsy complexion--
or they would get no doctoring at all."

"You don't seem to like him, Betteredge?"

"Nobody likes him, sir."

"Why is he so unpopular?"

"Well, Mr. Franklin, his appearance is against him, to begin with. And then
there's a story that Mr. Candy took him with a very doubtful character.
Nobody knows who he is--and he hasn't a friend in the place. How can you
expect one to like him, after that?"

"Quite impossible, of course! May I ask what he wanted with you,
when he gave you that bit of paper?"

"Only to bring me the weekly list of the sick people
about here, sir, who stand in need of a little wine.
My lady always had a regular distribution of good sound port
and sherry among the infirm poor; and Miss Rachel wishes the custom
to be kept up. Times have changed! times have changed!
I remember when Mr. Candy himself brought the list to my mistress.
Now it's Mr. Candy's assistant who brings the list to me.
I'll go on with the letter, if you will allow me, sir,"
said Betteredge, drawing Rosanna Spearman's confession back to him.
"It isn't lively reading, I grant you. But, there! it
keeps me from getting sour with thinking of the past."
He put on his spectacles, and wagged his head gloomily.
"There's a bottom of good sense, Mr. Franklin, in our conduct
to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of life.
We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world.
And we are all of us right."

Mr. Candy's assistant had produced too strong an impression
on me to be immediately dismissed from my thoughts. I passed
over the last unanswerable utterance of the Betteredge philosophy;
and returned to the subject of the man with the piebald hair.

"What is his name?"  I asked.

"As ugly a name as need be," Betteredge answered gruffly.
"Ezra Jennings."

CHAPTER V

Having told me the name of Mr. Candy's assistant, Betteredge appeared
to think that we had wasted enough of our time on an insignificant subject.
He resumed the perusal of Rosanna Spearman's letter.

On my side, I sat at the window, waiting until he had done.
Little by little, the impression produced on me by Ezra Jennings--
it seemed perfectly unaccountable, in such a situation as mine,
that any human being should have produced an impression on me at all!--
faded from my mind. My thoughts flowed back into their former channel.
Once more, I forced myself to look my own incredible position resolutely
in the face. Once more, I reviewed in my own mind the course
which I had at last summoned composure enough to plan out for
the future.

To go back to London that day; to put the whole case before Mr. Bruff;
and, last and most important, to obtain (no matter by what means
or at what sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel--this was my
plan of action, so far as I was capable of forming it at the time.
There was more than an hour still to spare before the train started.
And there was the bare chance that Betteredge might discover
something in the unread portion of Rosanna Spearman's letter,
which it might be useful for me to know before I left the house
in which the Diamond had been lost. For that chance I was
now waiting.

The letter ended in these terms:

"You have no need to be angry, Mr. Franklin, even if I did feel
some little triumph at knowing that I held all your prospects
in life in my own hands. Anxieties and fears soon came back to me.
With the view Sergeant Cuff took of the loss of the Diamond,
he would be sure to end in examining our linen and our dresses.
There was no place in my room--there was no place in the house--
which I could feel satisfied would be safe from him.
How to hide the nightgown so that not even the Sergeant
could find it? and how to do that without losing one moment
of precious time?--these were not easy questions to answer.
My uncertainties ended in my taking a way that may make you laugh.
I undressed, and put the nightgown on me. You had worn it--
and I had another little moment of pleasure in wearing it after
you.

"The next news that reached us in the servants' hall showed
that I had not made sure of the nightgown a moment too soon.
Sergeant Cuff wanted to see the washing-book.

"I found it, and took it to him in my lady's sitting-room.
The Sergeant and I had come across each other more than once
in former days. I was certain he would know me again--and I
was NOT certain of what he might do when he found me employed
as servant in a house in which a valuable jewel had been lost.
In this suspense, I felt it would be a relief to me to get
the meeting between us over, and to know the worst of it
at once.

"He looked at me as if I was a stranger, when I handed him
the washing-book; and he was very specially polite in thanking
me for bringing it. I thought those were both bad signs.
There was no knowing what he might say of me behind my back;
there was no knowing how soon I might not find myself taken
in custody on suspicion, and searched. It was then time for your
return from seeing Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite off by the railway;
and I went to your favourite walk in the shrubbery, to try
for another chance of speaking to you--the last chance, for all I
knew to the contrary, that I might have.

"You never appeared; and, what was worse still, Mr. Betteredge
and Sergeant Cuff passed by the place where I was hiding--
and the Sergeant saw me.

"I had no choice, after that, but to return to my proper place
and my proper work, before more disasters happened to me.
Just as I was going to step across the path, you came back
from the railway. You were making straight for the shrubbery,
when you saw me--I am certain, sir, you saw me--and you turned away
as if I had got the plague, and went into the house.*

* NOTE: by Franklin Blake.--The writer is entirely mistaken, poor creature.
I never noticed her. My intention was certainly to have taken a turn in
the shrubbery. But, remembering at the same moment that my aunt might wish
to see me, after my return from the railway, I altered my mind, and went into
the house.

"I made the best of my way indoors again, returning by
the servants' entrance. There was nobody in the laundry-room
at that time; and I sat down there alone. I have told you already
of the thoughts which the Shivering Sand put into my head.
Those thoughts came back to me now. I wondered in myself
which it would be harder to do, if things went on in this manner--
to bear Mr. Franklin Blake's indifference to me, or to jump
into the quicksand and end it for ever in that way?

"It's useless to ask me to account for my own conduct, at this time.
I try--and I can't understand it myself.

"Why didn't I stop you, when you avoided me in that cruel manner?
Why didn't I call out, 'Mr. Franklin, I have got something to say
to you; it concerns yourself, and you must, and shall, hear it?'
You were at my mercy--I had got the whip-hand of you, as they say.
And better than that, I had the means (if I could only make you trust me)
of being useful to you in the future. Of course, I never supposed that you--
a gentleman--had stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing it.
No. Penelope had heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard Mr. Betteredge,
talk about your extravagance and your debts. It was plain enough to me
that you had taken the Diamond to sell it, or pledge it, and so to get
the money of which you stood in need. Well! I could have told you
of a man in London who would have advanced a good large sum on the jewel,
and who would have asked no awkward questions about it either.

"Why didn't I speak to you! why didn't I speak to you!

"I wonder whether the risks and difficulties of keeping
the nightgown were as much as I could manage, without having
other risks and difficulties added to them? This might have been
the case with some women--but how could it be the case with me?
In the days when I was a thief, I had run fifty times greater risks,
and found my way out of difficulties to which THIS difficulty
was mere child's play. I had been apprenticed, as you may say,
to frauds and deceptions--some of them on such a grand scale,
and managed so cleverly, that they became famous,
and appeared in the newspapers. Was such a little thing
as the keeping of the nightgown likely to weigh on my spirits,
and to set my heart sinking within me, at the time when I ought
to have spoken to you? What nonsense to ask the question!
The thing couldn't be.

"Where is the use of my dwelling in this way on my own folly?
The plain truth is plain enough, surely? Behind your back,
I loved you with all my heart and soul. Before your face--
there's no denying it--I was frightened of you;
frightened of making you angry with me; frightened of what
you might say to me (though you HAD taken the Diamond)
if I presumed to tell you that I had found it out.
I had gone as near to it as I dared when I spoke to you
in the library. You had not turned your back on me then.
You had not started away from me as if I had got the plague.
I tried to provoke myself into feeling angry with you,
and to rouse up my courage in that way. No! I couldn't
feel anything but the misery and the mortification of it.
"You're a plain girl; you have got a crooked shoulder; you're only
a housemaid--what do you mean by attempting to speak to Me?"
You never uttered a word of that, Mr. Franklin; but you said it all
to me, nevertheless! Is such madness as this to be accounted for?
No. There is nothing to be done but to confess it, and let it
be.

"I ask your pardon, once more, for this wandering of my pen.
There is no fear of its happening again. I am close at the
end now.

"The first person who disturbed me by coming into the empty
room was Penelope. She had found out my secret long since,
and she had done her best to bring me to my senses--and done it
kindly too.

"'Ah!' she said, 'I know why you're sitting here, and fretting,
all by yourself. The best thing that can happen for your advantage,
Rosanna, will be for Mr. Franklin's visit here to come to an end.
It's my belief that he won't be long now before he leaves the house."

"In all my thoughts of you I had never thought of your going away.
I couldn't speak to Penelope. I could only look at her.

"'I've just left Miss Rachel,' Penelope went on.
'And a hard matter I have had of it to put up with her temper.
She says the house is unbearable to her with the police in it;
and she's determined to speak to my lady this evening,
and to go to her Aunt Ablewhite to-morrow. If she does that,
Mr. Franklin will be the next to find a reason for going away,
you may depend on it!'

"I recovered the use of my tongue at that. 'Do you mean to say
Mr. Franklin will go with her?'  I asked.

"'Only too gladly, if she would let him; but she won't. HE has
been made to feel her temper; HE is in her black books too--
and that after having done all he can to help her, poor fellow!
No! no! If they don't make it up before to-morrow, you
will see Miss Rachel go one way, and Mr. Franklin another.
Where he may betake himself to I can't say. But he will never
stay here, Rosanna, after Miss Rachel has left us.'

"I managed to master the despair I felt at the prospect of your going away.
To own the truth, I saw a little glimpse of hope for myself if there was
really a serious disagreement between Miss Rachel and you. 'Do you know,'
I asked, 'what the quarrel is between them?'

"'It is all on Miss Rachel's side,' Penelope said. 'And, for anything I
know to the contrary, it's all Miss Rachel's temper, and nothing else.
I am loth to distress you, Rosanna; but don't run away with the notion
that Mr. Franklin is ever likely to quarrel with HER. He's a great deal too
fond of her for that!'

"She had only just spoken those cruel words when there came a call to us
from Mr. Betteredge. All the indoor servants were to assemble in the hall.
And then we were to go in, one by one, and be questioned in Mr. Betteredge's
room by Sergeant Cuff.

"It came to my turn to go in, after her ladyship's maid and the upper
housemaid had been questioned first. Sergeant Cuff's inquiries--
though he wrapped them up very cunningly--soon showed me
that those two women (the bitterest enemies I had in the house)
had made their discoveries outside my door, on the Tuesday
afternoon, and again on the Thursday night. They had told
the Sergeant enough to open his eyes to some part of the truth.
He rightly believed me to have made a new nightgown secretly,
but he wrongly believed the paint-stained nightgown to be mine.
I felt satisfied of another thing, from what he said,
which it puzzled me to understand. He suspected me, of course,
of being concerned in the disappearance of the Diamond.
But, at the same time, he let me see--purposely, as I thought--
that he did not consider me as the person chiefly answerable
for the loss of the jewel. He appeared to think that I
had been acting under the direction of somebody else.
Who that person might be, I couldn't guess then, and can't
guess now.

"In this uncertainty, one thing was plain--that Sergeant Cuff
was miles away from knowing the whole truth. You were safe
as long as the nightgown was safe--and not a moment longer.

"I quite despair of making you understand the distress and terror
which pressed upon me now. It was impossible for me to risk
wearing your nightgown any longer. I might find myself taken off,
at a moment's notice, to the police court at Frizinghall,
to be charged on suspicion, and searched accordingly.
While Sergeant Cuff still left me free, I had to choose--and at once--
between destroying the nightgown, or hiding it in some safe place,
at some safe distance from the house.

"If I had only been a little less fond of you, I think I
should have destroyed it. But oh! how could destroy the only
thing I had which proved that I had saved you from discovery?
If we did come to an explanation together, and if you suspected
me of having some bad motive, and denied it all, how could I win
upon you to trust me, unless I had the nightgown to produce?
Was it wronging you to believe, as I did and do still,
that you might hesitate to let a poor girl like me be
the sharer of your secret, and your accomplice in the theft
which your money-troubles had tempted you to commit?
Think of your cold behaviour to me, sir, and you will hardly
wonder at my unwillingness to destroy the only claim on
your confidence and your gratitude which it was my fortune
to possess.

"I determined to hide it; and the place I fixed on was the place I knew best--
the Shivering Sand.

"As soon as the questioning was over, I made the first excuse that came
into my head, and got leave to go out for a breath of fresh air.
I went straight to Cobb's Hole, to Mr. Yolland's cottage.
His wife and daughter were the best friends I had. Don't suppose
I trusted them with your secret--I have trusted nobody.
All I wanted was to write this letter to you, and to have a safe
opportunity of taking the nightgown off me. Suspected as I was,
I could do neither of those things with any sort of security,
at the house.

"And now I have nearly got through my long letter, writing it
alone in Lucy Yolland's bedroom. When it is done, I shall go
downstairs with the nightgown rolled up, and hidden under my cloak.
I shall find the means I want for keeping it safe and dry in its
hiding-place, among the litter of old things in Mrs. Yolland's kitchen.
And then I shall go to the Shivering Sand--don't be afraid of my letting
my footmarks betray me!--and hide the nightgown down in the sand,
where no living creature can find it without being first let into
the secret by myself.

"And, when that's done, what then?

"Then, Mr. Franklin, I shall have two reasons for making another
attempt to say the words to you which I have not said yet.
If you leave the house, as Penelope believes you will leave it,
and if I haven't spoken to you before that, I shall lose my
opportunity forever. That is one reason. Then, again, there is
the comforting knowledge--if my speaking does make you angry--
that I have got the nightgown ready to plead my cause for me
as nothing else can. That is my other reason. If these two
together don't harden my heart against the coldness which has
hitherto frozen it up (I mean the coldness of your treatment
of me), there will be the end of my efforts--and the end of
my life.

"Yes. If I miss my next opportunity--if you are as cruel
as ever, and if I feel it again as I have felt it already--
good-bye to the world which has grudged me the happiness that it
gives to others. Good-bye to life, which nothing but a little
kindness from you can ever make pleasurable to me again.
Don't blame yourself, sir, if it ends in this way. But try--
do try--to feel some forgiving sorrow for me! I shall take
care that you find out what I have done for you, when I am past
telling you of it myself. Will you say something kind of me then--
in the same gentle way that you have when you speak to Miss Rachel?
If you do that, and if there are such things as ghosts,
I believe my ghost will hear it, and tremble with the pleasure
of it.

"It's time I left off. I am making myself cry. How am I to see my way
to the hiding-place if I let these useless tears come and blind me?

"Besides, why should I look at the gloomy side? Why not believe,
while I can, that it will end well after all? I may find you in a good
humour to-night--or, if not, I may succeed better to-morrow morning.
I sha'n't improve my plain face by fretting--shall I? Who knows but I
may have filled all these weary long pages of paper for nothing?
They will go, for safety's sake (never mind now for what other reason)
into the hiding-place along with the nightgown. It has been hard,
hard work writing my letter. Oh! if we only end in understanding each other,
how I shall enjoy tearing it up!

"I beg to remain, sir, your true lover and humble servant,

"ROSANNA SPEARMAN."

The reading of the letter was completed by Betteredge in silence.
After carefully putting it back in the envelope, he sat thinking,
with his head bowed down, and his eyes on the ground.

"Betteredge," I said, "is there any hint to guide me at the end
of the letter?"

He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.

"There is nothing to guide you, Mr. Franklin," he answered.
"If you take my advice you will keep the letter in the cover
till these present anxieties of yours have come to an end.
It will sorely distress you, whenever you read it. Don't read
it now."

I put the letter away in my pocket-book.

A glance back at the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters
of Betteredge's Narrative will show that there really
was a reason for my thus sparing myself, at a time when my
fortitude had been already cruelly tried. Twice over,
the unhappy woman had made her last attempt to speak to me.
And twice over, it had been my misfortune (God knows
how innocently!) to repel the advances she had made to me.
On the Friday night, as Betteredge truly describes it,
she had found me alone at the billiard-table. Her manner and
language suggested to me and would have suggested to any man,
under the circumstances--that she was about to confess a guilty
knowledge of the disappearance of the Diamond. For her own sake,
I had purposely shown no special interest in what was coming;
for her own sake, I had purposely looked at the billiard-balls,
instead of looking at HER--and what had been the result?
I had sent her away from me, wounded to the heart!
On the Saturday again--on the day when she must have foreseen,
after what Penelope had told her, that my departure was close
at hand--the same fatality still pursued us. She had once
more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had
found me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff.
In her hearing, the Sergeant, with his own underhand object
in view, had appealed to my interest in Rosanna Spearman.
Again for the poor creature's own sake, I had met
the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared--
loudly declared, so that she might hear me too--that I felt
"no interest whatever in Rosanna Spearman."  At those words,
solely designed to warn her against attempting to gain my private ear,
she had turned away and left the place: cautioned of her danger,
as I then believed; self-doomed to destruction, as I know now.
From that point, I have already traced the succession of events
which led me to the astounding discovery at the quicksand.
The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserable
story of Rosanna Spearman--to which, even at this distance
of time, I cannot revert without a pang of distress--
to suggest for itself all that is here purposely left unsaid.
I may pass from the suicide at the Shivering Sand, with its
strange and terrible influence on my present position and
future prospects, to interests which concern the living people
of this narrative, and to events which were already paving my
way for the slow and toilsome journey from the darkness to the
light.

CHAPTER VI

I walked to the railway station accompanied, it is needless to say,
by Gabriel Betteredge. I had the letter in my pocket, and the nightgown
safely packed in a little bag--both to be submitted, before I slept
that night, to the investigation of Mr. Bruff.

We left the house in silence. For the first time in my experience of him,
I found old Betteredge in my company without a word to say to me.
Having something to say on my side, I opened the conversation as soon as we
were clear of the lodge gates.

"Before I go to London," I began, "I have two questions to ask you.
They relate to myself, and I believe they will rather surprise you."

"If they will put that poor creature's letter out of my head,
Mr. Franklin, they may do anything else they like with me.
Please to begin surprising me, sir, as soon as you can."

"My first question, Betteredge, is this. Was I drunk on the night
of Rachel's Birthday?"

"YOU drunk!" exclaimed the old man. "Why it's the great defect
of your character, Mr. Franklin that you only drink with your dinner,
and never touch a drop of liquor afterwards!"

"But the birthday was a special occasion. I might have abandoned
my regular habits, on that night of all others."

Betteredge considered for a moment.

"You did go out of your habits, sir," he said. "And I'll tell you how.
You looked wretchedly ill--and we persuaded you to have a drop of brandy
and water to cheer you up a little."

"I am not used to brandy and water. It is quite possible----"

"Wait a bit, Mr. Franklin. I knew you were not used, too. I poured you out
half a wineglass-full of our fifty year old Cognac; and (more shame for me!)
I drowned that noble liquor in nigh on a tumbler-full of cold water.
A child couldn't have got drunk on it--let alone a grown man!"

I knew I could depend on his memory, in a matter of this kind.
It was plainly impossible that I could have been intoxicated.
I passed on to the second question.

"Before I was sent abroad, Betteredge, you saw a great deal
of me when I was a boy? Now tell me plainly, do you remember
anything strange of me, after I had gone to bed at night?
Did you ever discover me walking in my sleep?"

Betteredge stopped, looked at me for a moment, nodded his head,
and walked on again.

"I see your drift now, Mr. Franklin!" he said "You're trying to account
for how you got the paint on your nightgown, without knowing it yourself.
It won't do, sir. You're miles away still from getting at the truth.
Walk in your sleep? You never did such a thing in your life!"

Here again, I felt that Betteredge must be right. Neither at
home nor abroad had my life ever been of the solitary sort.
If I had been a sleep-walker, there were hundreds on hundreds
of people who must have discovered me, and who, in the interest
of my own safety, would have warned me of the habit, and have
taken precautions to restrain it.

Still, admitting all this, I clung--with an obstinacy which
was surely natural and excusable, under the circumstances--
to one or other of the only two explanations that I could see
which accounted for the unendurable position in which I then stood.
Observing that I was not yet satisfied, Betteredge shrewdly
adverted to certain later events in the history of the Moonstone;
and scattered both my theories to the wind at once and
for ever.

"Let's try it another way, sir," he said. "Keep your own opinion,
and see how far it will take you towards finding out the truth.
If we are to believe the nightgown--which I don't for one--
you not only smeared off the paint from the door, without knowing it,
but you also took the Diamond without knowing it. Is that right,
so far?"

"Quite right. Go on."

"Very good, sir. We'll say you were drunk, or walking in your sleep,
when you took the jewel. That accounts for the night and morning,
after the birthday. But how does it account for what has happened
since that time? The Diamond has been taken to London, since that time.
The Diamond has been pledged to Mr. Luker, since that time.
Did you do those two things, without knowing it, too? Were you drunk
when I saw you off in the pony-chaise on that Saturday evening?
And did you walk in your sleep to Mr. Luker's, when the train had brought
you to your journey's end? Excuse me for saying it, Mr. Franklin,
but this business has so upset you, that you're not fit yet to judge
for yourself. The sooner you lay your head alongside Mr. Bruff's head,
the sooner you will see your way out of the dead-lock that has got
you now."

We reached the station, with only a minute or two to spare.

I hurriedly gave Betteredge my address in London, so that
he might write to me, if necessary; promising, on my side,
to inform him of any news which I might have to communicate.
This done, and just as I was bidding him farewell, I happened
to glance towards the book-and-newspaper stall. There was
Mr. Candy's remarkable-looking assistant again, speaking to
the keeper of the stall! Our eyes met at the same moment.
Ezra Jennings took off his hat to me. I returned the salute,
and got into a carriage just as the train started.
It was a relief to my mind, I suppose, to dwell on any subject
which appeared to be, personally, of no sort of importance to me.
At all events, I began the momentous journey back which was
to take me to Mr. Bruff, wondering--absurdly enough, I admit--
that I should have seen the man with the piebald hair twice in
one day!

The hour at which I arrived in London precluded all hope
of my finding Mr. Bruff at his place of business.
I drove from the railway to his private residence at Hampstead,
and disturbed the old lawyer dozing alone in his dining-room,
with his favourite pug-dog on his lap, and his bottle of wine
at his elbow.

I shall best describe the effect which my story produced on the mind
of Mr. Bruff by relating his proceedings when he had heard it to the end.
He ordered lights, and strong tea, to be taken into his study;
and he sent a message to the ladies of his family, forbidding them
to disturb us on any pretence whatever. These preliminaries disposed of,
he first examined the nightgown, and then devoted himself to the reading of
Rosanna Spearman's letter.

The reading completed, Mr. Bruff addressed me for the first time
since we had been shut up together in the seclusion of his own room.

"Franklin Blake," said the old gentleman, "this is a very serious matter,
in more respects than one. In my opinion, it concerns Rachel quite as
nearly as it concerns you. Her extraordinary conduct is no mystery NOW.
She believes you have stolen the Diamond."

I had shrunk from reasoning my own way fairly to that revolting conclusion.
But it had forced itself on me, nevertheless. My resolution to obtain
a personal interview with Rachel, rested really and truly on the ground just
stated by Mr. Bruff.

"The first step to take in this investigation," the lawyer proceeded,
"is to appeal to Rachel. She has been silent all this time, from motives
which I (who know her character) can readily understand. It is impossible,
after what has happened, to submit to that silence any longer.
She must be persuaded to tell us, or she must be forced to tell us,
on what grounds she bases her belief that you took the Moonstone.
The chances are, that the whole of this case, serious as it seems now,
will tumble to pieces, if we can only break through Rachel's inveterate
reserve, and prevail upon her to speak out."

"That is a very comforting opinion for ME," I said. "I own I should
like to know

"You would like to know how I can justify it," inter-posed Mr. Bruff.
"I can tell you in two minutes. Understand, in the first place,
that I look at this matter from a lawyer's point of view. It's a
question of evidence, with me. Very well. The evidence breaks down,
at the outset, on one important point."

"On what point?"

"You shall hear. I admit that the mark of the name proves
the nightgown to be yours. I admit that the mark of the paint
proves the nightgown to have made the smear on Rachel's door.
But what evidence is there to prove that you are the person who
wore it, on the night when the Diamond was lost?"

The objection struck me, all the more forcibly that it reflected
an objection which I had felt myself.

"As to this," pursued the lawyer taking up Rosanna Spearman's confession,
"I can understand that the letter is a distressing one to YOU.
I can understand that you may hesitate to analyse it from a purely
impartial point of view. But I am not in your position.
I can bring my professional experience to bear on this document,
just as I should bring it to bear on any other. Without alluding
to the woman's career as a thief, I will merely remark that her letter
proves her to have been an adept at deception, on her own showing;
and I argue from that, that I am justified in suspecting her of not
having told the whole truth. I won't start any theory, at present,
as to what she may or may not have done. I will only say that,
if Rachel has suspected you ON THE EVIDENCE OF THE NIGHTGOWN ONLY,
the chances are ninety-nine to a hundred that Rosanna Spearman
was the person who showed it to her. In that case, there is
the woman's letter, confessing that she was jealous of Rachel,
confessing that she changed the roses, confessing that she saw
a glimpse of hope for herself, in the prospect of a quarrel
between Rachel and you. I don't stop to ask who took the Moonstone
(as a means to her end, Rosanna Spearman would have taken
fifty Moonstones)--I only say that the disappearance of the jewel
gave this reclaimed thief who was in love with you, an opportunity
of setting you and Rachel at variance for the rest of your lives.
She had not decided on destroying herself, THEN, remember; and, having
the opportunity, I distinctly assert that it was in her character,
and in her position at the time, to take it. What do you say
to that?"

"Some such suspicion," I answered, "crossed my own mind,
as soon as I opened the letter."

"Exactly! And when you had read the letter, you pitied the poor creature,
and couldn't find it in your heart to suspect her. Does you credit,
my dear sir--does you credit!"

"But suppose it turns out that I did wear the nightgown?
What then?"

"I don't see how the fact can be proved," said Mr. Bruff.
"But assuming the proof to be possible, the vindication of your
innocence would be no easy matter. We won't go into that, now.
Let us wait and see whether Rachel hasn't suspected you on
the evidence of the nightgown only."

"Good God, how coolly you talk of Rachel suspecting me!"
I broke out. "What right has she to suspect Me, on any evidence,
of being a thief?"

"A very sensible question, my dear sir. Rather hotly put--
but well worth considering for all that. What puzzles you,
puzzles me too. Search your memory, and tell me this. Did anything
happen while you were staying at the house--not, of course,
to shake Rachel's belief in your honour--but, let us say,
to shake her belief (no matter with how little reason) in your
principles generally?"

I started, in ungovernable agitation, to my feet. The lawyer's
question reminded me, for the first time since I had left England,
that something HAD happened.

In the eighth chapter of Betteredge's Narrative, an allusion will be
found to the arrival of a foreigner and a stranger at my aunt's house,
who came to see me on business. The nature of his business was this.

I had been foolish enough (being, as usual, straitened for money
at the time) to accept a loan from the keeper of a small
restaurant in Paris, to whom I was well known as a customer.
A time was settled between us for paying the money back;
and when the time came, I found it (as thousands of other
honest men have found it) impossible to keep my engagement.
I sent the man a bill. My name was unfortunately too well known
on such documents: he failed to negotiate it. His affairs had
fallen into disorder, in the interval since I had borrowed of him;
bankruptcy stared him in the face; and a relative of his,
a French lawyer, came to England to find me, and to insist
upon the payment of my debt. He was a man of violent temper;
and he took the wrong way with me. High words passed on both sides;
and my aunt and Rachel were unfortunately in the next room,
and heard us. Lady Verinder came in, and insisted on knowing
what was the matter. The Frenchman produced his credentials,
and declared me to be responsible for the ruin of a poor man,
who had trusted in my honour. My aunt instantly paid him
the money, and sent him off. She knew me better of course
than to take the Frenchman's view of the transaction.
But she was shocked at my carelessness, and justly angry with me
for placing myself in a position, which, but for her interference,
might have become a very disgraceful one. Either her mother
told her, or Rachel heard what passed--I can't say which.
She took her own romantic, high-flown view of the matter.
I was "heartless"; I was "dishonourable"; I had "no principle";
there was "no knowing what I might do next"--in short,
she said some of the severest things to me which I had ever
heard from a young lady's lips. The breach between us
lasted for the whole of the next day. The day after,
I succeeded in making my peace, and thought no more of it.
Had Rachel reverted to this unlucky accident, at the critical
moment when my place in her estimation was again, and far
more seriously, assailed? Mr. Bruff, when I had mentioned
the circumstances to him, answered the question at once in the
affirmative.

"It would have its effect on her mind," he said gravely.
"And I wish, for your sake, the thing had not happened.
However, we have discovered that there WAS a predisposing
influence against you--and there is one uncertainty cleared out
of our way, at any rate. I see nothing more that we can do now.
Our next step in this inquiry must be the step that takes us
to Rachel."

He rose, and began walking thoughtfully up and down the room. Twice, I was on
the point of telling him that I had determined on seeing Rachel personally;
and twice, having regard to his age and his character, I hesitated to take him
by surprise at an unfavourable moment.

"The grand difficulty is," he resumed, "how to make her show her whole
mind in this matter, without reserve. Have you any suggestions to offer?"

"I have made up my mind, Mr. Bruff, to speak to Rachel myself."

"You!"  He suddenly stopped in his walk, and looked at me as if he thought
I had taken leave of my senses. "You, of all the people in the world!"
He abruptly checked himself, and took another turn in the room.
"Wait a little," he said. "In cases of this extraordinary kind, the rash
way is sometimes the best way."  He considered the question for a moment
or two, under that new light, and ended boldly by a decision in my favour.
"Nothing venture, nothing have," the old gentleman resumed. "You have a
chance in your favour which I don't possess--and you shall be the first to try
the experiment."

"A chance in my favour?"  I repeated, in the greatest surprise.

Mr. Bruff's face softened, for the first time, into a smile.

"This is how it stands," he said. "I tell you fairly,
I don't trust your discretion, and I don't trust your temper.
But I do trust in Rachel's still preserving, in some remote
little corner of her heart, a certain perverse weakness for YOU.
Touch that--and trust to the consequences for the fullest
disclosures that can flow from a woman's lips! The question is--
how are you to see her?"

"She has been a guest of yours at this house," I answered.
"May I venture to suggest--if nothing was said about me beforehand--
that I might see her here?"

"Cool!" said Mr. Bruff. With that one word of comment on the reply that I
had made to him, he took another turn up and down the room.

"In plain English," he said, "my house is to be turned
into a trap to catch Rachel; with a bait to tempt her,
in the shape of an invitation from my wife and daughters.
If you were anybody else but Franklin Blake, and if this matter
was one atom less serious than it really is, I should refuse
point-blank. As things are, I firmly believe Rachel will live
to thank me for turning traitor to her in my old age. Consider me
your accomplice. Rachel shall be asked to spend the day here;
and you shall receive due notice of it."

"When? To-morrow?"

"To-morrow won't give us time enough to get her answer.
Say the day after."

"How shall I hear from you?"

"Stay at home all the morning and expect me to call on you."

I thanked him for the inestimable assistance which he was rendering to me,
with the gratitude that I really felt; and, declining a hospitable invitation
to sleep that night at Hampstead, returned to my lodgings in London.

Of the day that followed, I have only to say that it was the longest
day of my life. Innocent as I knew myself to be, certain as I was
that the abominable imputation which rested on me must sooner or later
be cleared off, there was nevertheless a sense of self-abasement in my
mind which instinctively disinclined me to see any of my friends.
We often hear (almost invariably, however, from superficial observers)
that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely
the truer axiom of the two that innocence can look like guilt.
I caused myself to be denied all day, to every visitor who called; and I
only ventured out under cover of the night.

The next morning, Mr. Bruff surprised me at the breakfast-table. He
handed me a large key, and announced that he felt ashamed of himself
for the first time in his life.

"Is she coming?"

"She is coming to-day, to lunch and spend the afternoon with my wife
and my girls."

"Are Mrs. Bruff, and your daughters, in the secret?"

"Inevitably. But women, as you may have observed, have no principles.
My family don't feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you
and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means employed
to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits."

"I am infinitely obliged to them. What is this key?"

"The key of the gate in my back-garden wall. Be there at three
this afternoon. Let yourself into the garden, and make your way
in by the conservatory door. Cross the small drawing-room, and open
the door in front of you which leads into the music-room. There,
you will find Rachel--and find her, alone."

"How can I thank you!"

"I will tell you how. Don't blame me for what happens afterwards."

With those words, he went out.

I had many weary hours still to wait through. To while away the time,
I looked at my letters. Among them was a letter from Betteredge.

I opened it eagerly. To my surprise and disappointment, it began
with an apology warning me to expect no news of any importance.
In the next sentence the everlasting Ezra Jennings appeared again!
He had stopped Betteredge on the way out of the station,
and had asked who I was. Informed on this point,
he had mentioned having seen me to his master Mr. Candy.
Mr. Candy hearing of this, had himself driven over to Betteredge,
to express his regret at our having missed each other.
He had a reason for wishing particularly to speak to me;
and when I was next in the neighbourhood of Frizinghall, he begged
I would let him know. Apart from a few characteristic utterances
of the Betteredge philosophy, this was the sum and substance
of my correspondent's letter. The warm-hearted, faithful old man
acknowledged that he had written "mainly for the pleasure of writing
to me."

I crumpled up the letter in my pocket, and forgot it the moment after,
in the all-absorbing interest of my coming interview with Rachel.

As the clock of Hampstead church struck three, I put Mr. Bruff's key into
the lock of the door in the wall. When I first stepped into the garden,
and while I was securing the door again on the inner side, I own to having
felt a certain guilty doubtfulness about what might happen next.
I looked furtively on either side of me; suspicious of the presence
of some unexpected witness in some unknown corner of the garden.
Nothing appeared, to justify my apprehensions. The walks were,
one and all, solitudes; and the birds and the bees were the only witnesses.

I passed through the garden; entered the conservatory; and crossed
the small drawing-room. As I laid my hand on the door opposite,
I heard a few plaintive chords struck on the piano in the room within.
She had often idled over the instrument in this way, when I was staying
at her mother's house. I was obliged to wait a little, to steady myself.
The past and present rose side by side, at that supreme moment--and the
contrast shook me.

After the lapse of a minute, I roused my manhood, and opened the door.

CHAPTER VII

At the moment when I showed myself in the doorway, Rachel rose from the piano.

I closed the door behind me. We confronted each other in silence,
with the full length of the room between us. The movement she had made
in rising appeared to be the one exertion of which she was capable.
All use of every other faculty, bodily or mental, seemed to be merged in
the mere act of looking at me.

A fear crossed my mind that I had shown myself too suddenly.
I advanced a few steps towards her. I said gently, "Rachel!"

The sound of my voice brought the life back to her limbs,
and the colour to her face. She advanced, on her side,
still without speaking. Slowly, as if acting under some influence
independent of her own will, she came nearer and nearer to me;
the warm dusky colour flushing her cheeks, the light of
reviving intelligence brightening every instant in her eyes.
I forgot the object that had brought me into her presence;
I forgot the vile suspicion that rested on my good name;
I forgot every consideration, past, present, and future, which I
was bound to remember. I saw nothing but the woman I loved coming
nearer and nearer to me. She trembled; she stood irresolute.
I could resist it no longer--I caught her in my arms, and covered her
face with kisses.

There was a moment when I thought the kisses were returned;
a moment when it seemed as if she, too might have forgotten.
Almost before the idea could shape itself in my mind,
her first voluntary action made me feel that she remembered.
With a cry which was like a cry of horror--with a strength
which I doubt if I could have resisted if I had tried--
she thrust me back from her. I saw merciless anger in her eyes;
I saw merciless contempt on her lips. She looked me over,
from head to foot, as she might have looked at a stranger who had
insulted her.

"You coward!" she said. "You mean, miserable, heartless coward!"

Those were her first words! The most unendurable reproach that a woman can
address to a man, was the reproach that she picked out to address to Me.

"I remember the time, Rachel," I said, "when you could have
told me that I had offended you, in a worthier way than that.
I beg your pardon."

Something of the bitterness that I felt may have communicated
itself to my voice. At the first words of my reply, her eyes,
which had been turned away the moment before, looked back
at me unwillingly. She answered in a low tone, with a sullen
submission of manner which was quite new in my experience
of her.

"Perhaps there is some excuse for me," she said. "After what you have done,
is it a manly action, on your part, to find your way to me as you have found
it to-day? It seems a cowardly experiment, to try an experiment on my
weakness for you. It seems a cowardly surprise, to surprise me into letting
you kiss me. But that is only a woman's view. I ought to have known it
couldn't be your view. I should have done better if I had controlled myself,
and said nothing."

The apology was more unendurable than the insult. The most degraded
man living would have felt humiliated by it.

"If my honour was not in your hands," I said, "I would leave you this instant,
and never see you again. You have spoken of what I have done. What have
I done?"

"What have you done! YOU ask that question of ME?"

"I ask it."

"I have kept your infamy a secret," she answered.
"And I have suffered the consequences of concealing it.
Have I no claim to be spared the insult of your asking me
what you have done? Is ALL sense of gratitude dead in you?
You were once a gentleman. You were once dear to my mother,
and dearer still to me----"

Her voice failed her. She dropped into a chair, and turned her back on me,
and covered her face with her hands.

I waited a little before I trusted myself to say any more.
In that moment of silence, I hardly know which I felt
most keenly--the sting which her contempt had planted in me,
or the proud resolution which shut me out from all community
with her distress.

"If you will not speak first," I said, "I must. I have come here
with something serious to say to you. Will you do me the common
justice of listening while I say it?"

She neither moved, nor answered. I made no second appeal to her;
I never advanced an inch nearer to her chair. With a pride
which was as obstinate as her pride, I told her of my discovery
at the Shivering Sand, and of all that had led to it.
The narrative, of necessity, occupied some little time.
From beginning to end, she never looked round at me, and she never
uttered a word.

I kept my temper. My whole future depended, in all probability,
on my not losing possession of myself at that moment.
The time had come to put Mr. Bruff's theory to the test.
In the breathless interest of trying that experiment, I moved round
so as to place myself in front of her.

"I have a question to ask you," I said. "It obliges me to refer again
to a painful subject. Did Rosanna Spearman show you the nightgown.
Yes, or No?"

She started to her feet; and walked close up to me of her own accord.
Her eyes looked me searchingly in the face, as if to read something there
which they had never read yet.

"Are you mad?" she asked.

I still restrained myself. I said quietly, "Rachel, will you answer
my question?"

She went on, without heeding me.

"Have you some object to gain which I don't understand?
Some mean fear about the future, in which I am concerned?
They say your father's death has made you a rich man.
Have you come here to compensate me for the loss of my Diamond?
And have you heart enough left to feel ashamed of your errand?
Is THAT the secret of your pretence of innocence,
and your story about Rosanna Spearman? Is there
a motive of shame at the bottom of all the falsehood,
this time?"

I stopped her there. I could control myself no longer.

"You have done me an infamous wrong!"  I broke out hotly.
"You suspect me of stealing your Diamond. I have a right to know,
and I WILL know, the reason why!"

"Suspect you!" she exclaimed, her anger rising with mine.
"YOU VILLAIN, I SAW YOU TAKE THE DIAMOND WITH MY OWN EYES!"

The revelation which burst upon me in those words, the overthrow
which they instantly accomplished of the whole view of the case on
which Mr. Bruff had relied, struck me helpless. Innocent as I was,
I stood before her in silence. To her eyes, to any eyes, I must
have looked like a man overwhelmed by the discovery of his own guilt.

She drew back from the spectacle of my humiliation and of her triumph.
The sudden silence that had fallen upon me seemed to frighten her.
"I spared you, at the time," she said. "I would have spared you now,
if you had not forced me to speak."  She moved away as if to leave the room--
and hesitated before she got to the door. "Why did you come here to
humiliate yourself?" she asked. "Why did you come here to humiliate me?"
She went on a few steps, and paused once more. "For God's sake,
say something!" she exclaimed, passionately. "If you have any mercy left,
don't let me degrade myself in this way! Say something--and drive me out of
the room!"

I advanced towards her, hardly conscious of what I was doing.
I had possibly some confused idea of detaining her until she
had told me more. From the moment when I knew that the evidence
on which I stood condemned in Rachel's mind, was the evidence of
her own eyes, nothing--not even my conviction of my own innocence--
was clear to my mind. I took her by the hand; I tried to speak
firmly and to the purpose. All I could say was, "Rachel, you once
loved me."

She shuddered, and looked away from me. Her hand lay powerless
and trembling in mine. Let go of it," she said faintly.

My touch seemed to have the same effect on her which the sound
of my voice had produced when I first entered the room.
After she had said the word which called me a coward,
after she had made the avowal which branded me as a thief--
while her hand lay in mine I was her master still!

I drew her gently back into the middle of the room.
I seated her by the side of me. "Rachel," I said, "I can't
explain the contradiction in what I am going to tell you.
I can only speak the truth as you have spoken it. You saw me--
with your own eyes, you saw me take the Diamond. Before God who
hears us, I declare that I now know I took it for the first time!
Do you doubt me still?"

She had neither heeded nor heard me. "Let go of my hand,"
she repeated faintly. That was her only answer. Her head sank
on my shoulder; and her hand unconsciously closed on mine,
at the moment when she asked me to release it.

I refrained from pressing the question. But there my forbearance stopped.
My chance of ever holding up my head again among honest men depended on my
chance of inducing her to make her disclosure complete. The one hope left
for me was the hope that she might have overlooked something in the chain
of evidence some mere trifle, perhaps, which might nevertheless, under careful
investigation, be made the means of vindicating my innocence in the end.
I own I kept possession of her hand. I own I spoke to her with all that I
could summon back of the sympathy and confidence of the bygone time.

"I want to ask you something," I said. "I want you to tell me everything
that happened, from the time when we wished each other good night,
to the time when you saw me take the Diamond."

She lifted her head from my shoulder, and made an effort to release her hand.
"Oh, why go back to it!" she said. "Why go back to it!"

"I will tell you why, Rachel. You are the victim, and I am the victim,
of some monstrous delusion which has worn the mask of truth.
If we look at what happened on the night of your birthday together,
we may end in understanding each other yet."

Her head dropped back on my shoulder. The tears gathered
in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks. "Oh!" she said,
"have I never had that hope? Have I not tried to see it,
as you are trying now?"

"You have tried by yourself," I answered. "You have not tried with me
to help you."

Those words seemed to awaken in her something of the hope which I felt myself
when I uttered them. She replied to my questions with more than docility--
she exerted her intelligence; she willingly opened her whole mind to me.

"Let us begin," I said, "with what happened after we had wished
each other good night. Did you go to bed? or did you sit up?"

"I went to bed."

"Did you notice the time? Was it late?"

"Not very. About twelve o'clock, I think."

"Did you fall asleep?"

"No. I couldn't sleep that night."

"You were restless?"

"I was thinking of you."

The answer almost unmanned me. Something in the tone,
even more than in the words, went straight to my heart.
It was only after pausing a little first that I was able to
go on.

"Had you any light in your room?"  I asked.

"None--until I got up again, and lit my candle."

"How long was that, after you had gone to bed?"

"About an hour after, I think. About one o'clock."

"Did you leave your bedroom?"

"I was going to leave it. I had put on my dressing-gown;
and I was going into my sitting-room to get a book----"

"Had you opened your bedroom door?"

"I had just opened it."

"But you had not gone into the sitting-room?"

"No--I was stopped from going into it."

"What stopped you?

"I saw a light, under the door; and I heard footsteps approaching it."

"Were you frightened?"

"Not then. I knew my poor mother was a bad sleeper;
and I remembered that she had tried hard, that evening,
to persuade me to let her take charge of my Diamond.
She was unreasonably anxious about it, as I thought;
and I fancied she was coming to me to see if I was in bed,
and to speak to me about the Diamond again, if she found that I
was up."

"What did you do?"

"I blew out my candle, so that she might think I was in bed.
I was unreasonable, on my side--I was determined to keep my Diamond
in the place of my own choosing."

"After blowing out the candle, did you go back to bed?"

"I had no time to go back. At the moment when I blew the candle out,
the sitting-room door opened, and I saw----"

"You saw?"

"You."

"Dressed as usual?"

"No."

"In my nightgown?"

"In your nightgown--with your bedroom candle in your hand."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"Could you see my face?"

"Yes."

"Plainly?"

"Quite plainly. The candle in your hand showed it to me."

"Were my eyes open?"

"Yes."

"Did you notice anything strange in them? Anything like a fixed,
vacant expression?"

"Nothing of the sort. Your eyes were bright--brighter than usual.
You looked about in the room, as if you knew you were where you ought
not to be, and as if you were afraid of being found out."

"Did you observe one thing when I came into the room--
did you observe how I walked?"

"You walked as you always do. You came in as far as the middle of the room--
and then you stopped and looked about you."

"What did you do, on first seeing me?"

"I could do nothing. I was petrified. I couldn't speak,
I couldn't call out, I couldn't even move to shut my door."

"Could I see you, where you stood?"

"You might certainly have seen me. But you never looked towards me.
It's useless to ask the question. I am sure you never saw me."

"How are you sure?"

"Would you have taken the Diamond? would you have acted as you
did afterwards? would you be here now--if you had seen that I was
awake and looking at you? Don't make me talk of that part of it!
I want to answer you quietly. Help me to keep as calm as I can.
Go on to something else."

She was right--in every way, right. I went on to other things.

"What did I do, after I had got to the middle of the room,
and had stopped there?"

"You turned away, and went straight to the corner near the window--
where my Indian cabinet stands."

"When I was at the cabinet, my back must have been turned towards you.
How did you see what I was doing?"

"When you moved, I moved."

"So as to see what I was about with my hands?"

"There are three glasses in my sitting-room. As you stood there,
I saw all that you did, reflected in one of them."

"What did you see?"

"You put your candle on the top of the cabinet. You opened, and shut,
one drawer after another, until you came to the drawer in which I
had put my Diamond. You looked at the open drawer for a moment.
And then you put your hand in, and took the Diamond out."

"How do you know I took the Diamond out?"

"I saw your hand go into the drawer. And I saw the gleam of the stone
between your finger and thumb, when you took your hand out."

"Did my hand approach the drawer again--to close it, for instance?"

"No. You had the Diamond in your right hand; and you took the candle
from the top of the cabinet with your left hand."

"Did I look about me again, after that?"

"No."

"Did I leave the room immediately?"

"No. You stood quite still, for what seemed a long time.
I saw your face sideways in the glass. You looked like a
man thinking, and dissatisfied with his own thoughts."

"What happened next?"

"You roused yourself on a sudden, and you went straight out of the room."

"Did I close the door after me?"

"No. You passed out quickly into the passage, and left the door open."

"And then?"

"Then, your light disappeared, and the sound of your steps died away,
and I was left alone in the dark."

"Did nothing happen--from that time, to the time when the whole house
knew that the Diamond was lost?"

"Nothing."

"Are you sure of that? Might you not have been asleep a part of the time?"

"I never slept. I never went back to my bed. Nothing happened until
Penelope came in, at the usual time in the morning."

I dropped her hand, and rose, and took a turn in the room.
Every question that I could put had been answered.
Every detail that I could desire to know had been placed before me.
I had even reverted to the idea of sleep-walking, and the idea
of intoxication; and, again, the worthlessness of the one theory
and the other had been proved--on the authority, this time,
of the witness who had seen me. What was to be said next? what
was to be done next? There rose the horrible fact of the Theft--
the one visible, tangible object that confronted me, in the midst
of the impenetrable darkness which enveloped all besides!
Not a glimpse of light to guide me, when I had possessed
myself of Rosanna Spearman's secret at the Shivering Sand.
And not a glimpse of light now, when I had appealed to Rachel
herself, and had heard the hateful story of the night from her
own lips.

She was the first, this time, to break the silence.

"Well?" she said, "you have asked, and I have answered.
You have made me hope something from all this, because you hoped
something from it. What have you to say now?"

The tone in which she spoke warned me that my influence over her was a lost
influence once more.

"We were to look at what happened on my birthday night, together,"
she went an; "and we were then to understand each other. Have we done that?"

She waited pitilessly for my reply. In answering her I committed
a fatal error--I let the exasperating helplessness of my situation get
the better of my self-control. Rashly and uselessly, I reproached her
for the silence which had kept me until that moment in ignorance of the truth.

"If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken," I began;
"if you had done me the common justice to explain yourself----"

She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said
seemed to have lashed her on the instant into a frenzy of rage.

"Explain myself!" she repeated. "Oh! is there another man
like this in the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking;
I screen him when my own character is at stake; and HE--
of all human beings, HE--turns on me now, and tells me
that I ought to have explained myself! After believing
in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking
of him by day, and dreaming of him by night--he wonders I
didn't charge him with his disgrace the first time we met:
"My heart's darling, you are a Thief! My hero whom I love
and honour, you have crept into my room under cover of the night,
and stolen my Diamond!"  That is what I ought to have said.
You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost
fifty diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it
lying now!"

I took up my hat. In mercy to HER--yes! I can honestly say it--
in mercy to HER, I turned away without a word, and opened the door
by which I had entered the room.

She followed, and snatched the door out of my hand; she closed it,
and pointed back to the place that I had left.

"No!" she said. "Not yet! It seems that I owe a justification
of my conduct to you. You shall stay and hear it. Or you shall
stoop to the lowest infamy of all, and force your way out."

It wrung my heart to see her; it wrung my heart to hear her.
I answered by a sign--it was all I could do--that I submitted
myself to her will.

The crimson flush of anger began to fade out of her face, as I went back,
and took my chair in silence. She waited a little, and steadied herself.
When she went on, but one sign of feeling was discernible in her.
She spoke without looking at me. Her hands were fast clasped in her lap,
and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"I ought to have done you the common justice to explain myself," she said,
repeating my own words. "You shall see whether I did try to do you justice,
or not. I told you just now that I never slept, and never returned to my bed,
after you had left my sitting-room. It's useless to trouble you by dwelling
on what I thought--you would not understand my thoughts--I will only tell
you what I did, when time enough had passed to help me to recover myself.
I refrained from alarming the house, and telling everybody what had happened--
as I ought to have done. In spite of what I had seen, I was fond enough
of you to believe--no matter what!--any impossibility, rather than admit it to
my own mind that you were deliberately a thief. I thought and thought--and I
ended in writing to you."

"I never received the letter."

"I know you never received it. Wait a little, and you shall
hear why. My letter would have told you nothing openly.
It would not have ruined you for life, if it had fallen
into some other person's hands. It would only have said--
in a manner which you yourself could not possibly have mistaken--
that I had reason to know you were in debt, and that it
was in my experience and in my mother's experience of you,
that you were not very discreet, or very scrupulous about how
you got money when you wanted it. You would have remembered
the visit of the French lawyer, and you would have known what I
referred to. If you had read on with some interest after that,
you would have come to an offer I had to make to you--
the offer, privately (not a word, mind, to be said openly
about it between us!), of the loan of as large a sum of money
as I could get.--And I would have got it!" she exclaimed,
her colour beginning to rise again, and her eyes looking up
at me once more. "I would have pledged the Diamond myself,
if I could have got the money in no other way!
In those words I wrote to you. Wait! I did more than that.
I arranged with Penelope to give you the letter when nobody
was near. I planned to shut myself into my bedroom, and to
have the sitting-room left open and empty all the morning.
And I hoped--with all my heart and soul I hoped!--that you would
take the opportunity, and put the Diamond back secretly in
the drawer."

I attempted to speak. She lifted her hand impatiently, and stopped me.
In the rapid alternations of her temper, her anger was beginning to
rise again. She got up from her chair, and approached me.

"I know what you are going to say," she went on. "You are
going to remind me again that you never received my letter.
I can tell you why. I tore it up.

"For what reason?"  I asked.

"For the best of reasons. I preferred tearing it up to throwing it
away upon such a man as you! What was the first news that reached me
in the morning? Just as my little plan was complete, what did I hear?
I heard that you--you!!!--were the foremost person in the house
in fetching the police. You were the active man; you were the leader;
you were working harder than any of them to recover the jewel!
You even carried your audacity far enough to ask to speak to ME
about the loss of the Diamond--the Diamond which you yourself
had stolen; the Diamond which was all the time in your own hands!
After that proof of your horrible falseness and cunning, I tore up
my letter. But even then--even when I was maddened by the searching
and questioning of the policeman, whom you had sent in--even then,
there was some infatuation in my mind which wouldn't let me give you up.
I said to myself, "He has played his vile farce before everybody
else in the house. Let me try if he can play it before me."
Somebody told me you were on the terrace. I went down to the terrace.
I forced myself to look at you; I forced myself to speak to you. Have you
forgotten what I said?"

I might have answered that I remembered every word of it.
But what purpose, at that moment, would the answer have served?

How could I tell her that what she had said had astonished me,
had distressed me, had suggested to me that she was in a state
of dangerous nervous excitement, had even roused a moment's
doubt in my mind whether the loss of the jewel was as much
a mystery to her as to the rest of us--but had never once given
me so much as a glimpse at the truth? Without the shadow
of a proof to produce in vindication of my innocence, how could
I persuade her that I knew no more than the veriest stranger
could have known of what was really in her thoughts when she
spoke to me on the terrace?

"It may suit your convenience to forget; it suits my convenience to remember,"
she went on. "I know what I said--for I considered it with myself, before I
said it. I gave you one opportunity after another of owning the truth.
I left nothing unsaid that I COULD say--short of actually telling you that I
knew you had committed the theft. And all the return you made, was to look at
me with your vile pretence of astonishment, and your false face of innocence--
just as you have looked at me to-day; just as you are looking at me now!
I left you, that morning, knowing you at last for what you were--for what you
are--as base a wretch as ever walked the earth!"

"If you had spoken out at the time, you might have left me,
Rachel, knowing that you had cruelly wronged an innocent man."

"If I had spoken out before other people," she retorted, with another
burst of indignation, "you would have been disgraced for life!
If I had spoken out to no ears but yours, you would have denied it,
as you are denying it now! Do you think I should have believed you?
Would a man hesitate at a lie, who had done what I saw YOU do--
who had behaved about it afterwards, as I saw YOU behave?
I tell you again, I shrank from the horror of hearing you lie,
after the horror of seeing you thieve. You talk as if this
was a misunderstanding which a few words might have set right!
Well! the misunderstanding is at an end. Is the thing set right?
No! the thing is just where it was. I don't believe you NOW!
I don't believe you found the nightgown, I don't believe in
Rosanna Spearman's letter, I don't believe a word you have said.
You stole it--I saw you! You affected to help the police--I saw you!
You pledged the Diamond to the money-lender in London--I am sure of it!
You cast the suspicion of your disgrace (thanks to my base silence!)
on an innocent man! You fled to the Continent with your plunder
the next morning! After all that vileness, there was but one thing
more you COULD do. You could come here with a last falsehood
on your lips--you could come here, and tell me that I have wronged
you!"

If I had stayed a moment more, I know not what words might have escaped
me which I should have remembered with vain repentance and regret.
I passed by her, and opened the door for the second time.
For the second time--with the frantic perversity of a roused woman--
she caught me by the arm, and barred my way out.

"Let me go, Rachel" I said. "It will be better for both of us.
Let me go."

The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom--her quickened convulsive
breathing almost beat on my face, as she held me back at the door.

"Why did you come here?" she persisted, desperately. "I ask you again--
why did you come here? Are you afraid I shall expose you?
Now you are a rich man, now you have got a place in the world,
now you may marry the best lady in the land--are you afraid I shall
say the words which I have never said yet to anybody but you?
I can't say the words! I can't expose you! I am worse, if worse
can be, than you are yourself."  Sobs and tears burst from her.
She struggled with them fiercely; she held me more and more firmly.
"I can't tear you out of my heart," she said, "even now!
You may trust in the shameful, shameful weakness which can only
struggle against you in this way!"  She suddenly let go of me--
she threw up her hands, and wrung them frantically in the air.
"Any other woman living would shrink from the disgrace of touching him!"
she exclaimed. "Oh, God! I despise myself even more heartily than I
despise HIM!"

The tears were forcing their way into my eyes in spite of me--
the horror of it was to be endured no longer.

"You shall know that you have wronged me, yet," I said.
"Or you shall never see me again!"

With those words, I left her. She started up from the chair
on which she had dropped the moment before: she started up--
the noble creature!--and followed me across the outer room,
with a last merciful word at parting.

"Franklin!" she said, "I forgive you! Oh, Franklin, Franklin! we
shall never meet again. Say you forgive ME!"

I turned, so as to let my face show her that I was past speaking--
I turned, and waved my hand, and saw her dimly, as in a vision,
through the tears that had conquered me at last.

The next moment, the worst bitterness of it was over.
I was out in the garden again. I saw her, and heard her,
no more.

CHAPTER VIII

Late that evening, I was surprised at my lodgings by a visit from Mr. Bruff.

There was a noticeable change in the lawyer's manner.
It had lost its usual confidence and spirit. He shook hands
with me, for the first time in his life, in silence.

"Are you going back to Hampstead?"  I asked, by way of saying something.

"I have just left Hampstead," he answered. "I know, Mr. Franklin,
that you have got at the truth at last. But, I tell you plainly,
if I could have foreseen the price that was to be paid for it,
I should have preferred leaving you in the dark."

"You have seen Rachel?"

"I have come here after taking her back to Portland Place;
it was impossible to let her return in the carriage by herself.
I can hardly hold you responsible--considering that you
saw her in my house and by my permission--for the shock
that this unlucky interview has inflicted on her. All I
can do is to provide against a repetition of the mischief.
She is young--she has a resolute spirit--she will get over this,
with time and rest to help her. I want to be assured that you
will do nothing to hinder her recovery. May I depend on your
making no second attempt to see her--except with my sanction
and approval?"

"After what she has suffered, and after what I have suffered,"
I said, "you may rely on me."

"I have your promise?"

"You have my promise."

Mr. Bruff looked relieved. He put down his hat, and drew his chair nearer
to mine.

"That's settled!" he said. "Now, about the future--your future, I mean.
To my mind, the result of the extraordinary turn which the matter has
now taken is briefly this. In the first place, we are sure that Rachel
has told you the whole truth, as plainly as words can tell it.
In the second place--though we know that there must be some dreadful
mistake somewhere--we can hardly blame her for believing you to be guilty,
on the evidence of her own senses; backed, as that evidence has been,
by circumstances which appear, on the face of them, to tell dead
against you."

There I interposed. "I don't blame Rachel," I said.
"I only regret that she could not prevail on herself to speak
more plainly to me at the time."

"You might as well regret that Rachel is not somebody else,"
rejoined Mr. Bruff. "And even then, I doubt if a girl
of any delicacy, whose heart had been set on marrying you,
could have brought herself to charge you to your face with being
a thief. Anyhow, it was not in Rachel's nature to do it.
In a very different matter to this matter of yours--
which placed her, however, in a position not altogether
unlike her position towards you--I happen to know that she
was influenced by a similar motive to the motive which actuated
her conduct in your case. Besides, as she told me herself,
on our way to town this evening, if she had spoken plainly,
she would no more have believed your denial then than she
believes it now. What answer can you make to that?
There is no answer to be made to it. Come, come, Mr. Franklin!
my view of the case has been proved to be all wrong,
I admit--but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having
for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time,
and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back,
and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning.
Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year
at Lady Verinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN
discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT discover in
the past."

"Surely you forget," I said, "that the whole thing is essentially
a matter of the past--so far as I am concerned?"

"Answer me this," retorted Mr. Bruff. "Is the Moonstone at the bottom
of all the mischief--or is it not?"

"It is--of course."

"Very good. What do we believe was done with the Moonstone,
when it was taken to London?"

"It was pledged to Mr. Luker."

"We know that you are not the person who pledged it.
Do we know who did?"

"No."

"Where do we believe the Moonstone to be now?"

"Deposited in the keeping of Mr. Luker's bankers."

"Exactly. Now observe. We are already in the month of June.
Towards the end of the month (I can't be particular to a day)
a year will have elapsed from the time when we believe the jewel
to have been pledged. There is a chance--to say the least--
that the person who pawned it, may be prepared to redeem
it when the year's time has expired. If he redeems it,
Mr. Luker must himself--according to the terms of his
own arrangement--take the Diamond out of his banker's hands.
Under these circumstances, I propose setting a watch at the bank,
as the present month draws to an end, and discovering who the
person is to whom Mr. Luker restores the Moonstone. Do you see
it now?"

I admitted (a little unwillingly) that the idea was a new one,
at any rate.

"It's Mr. Murthwaite's idea quite as much as mine,"
said Mr. Bruff. "It might have never entered my head,
but for a conversation we had together some time since.
If Mr. Murthwaite is right, the Indians are likely to be on
the lookout at the bank, towards the end of the month too--
and something serious may come of it. What comes of it
doesn't matter to you and me except as it may help us to lay
our hands on the mysterious Somebody who pawned the Diamond.
That person, you may rely on it, is responsible (I don't
pretend to know how) for the position in which you stand
at this moment; and that person alone can set you right in
Rachel's estimation."

"I can't deny," I said, "that the plan you propose meets the difficulty
in a way that is very daring, and very ingenious, and very new. But----"

"But you have an objection to make?"

"Yes. My objection is, that your proposal obliges us to wait."

"Granted. As I reckon the time, it requires you to wait about a fortnight--
more or less. Is that so very long?"

"It's a life-time, Mr. Bruff, in such a situation as mine.
My existence will be simply unendurable to me, unless I do
something towards clearing my character at once."

"Well, well, I understand that. Have you thought yet of what you can do?"

"I have thought of consulting Sergeant Cuff."

"He has retired from the police. It's useless to expect the Sergeant
to help you."

"I know where to find him; and I can but try."

"Try," said Mr. Bruff, after a moment's consideration.
"The case has assumed such an extraordinary aspect since Sergeant
Cuff's time, that you may revive his interest in the inquiry.
Try, and let me hear the result. In the meanwhile,"
he continued, rising, "if you make no discoveries between this,
and the end of the month, am I free to try, on my side,
what can be done by keeping a lookout at the bank?"

"Certainly," I answered--"unless I relieve you of all necessity for trying
the experiment in the interval."

Mr. Bruff smiled, and took up his hat.

"Tell Sergeant Cuff," he rejoined, "that I say the discovery of the truth
depends on the discovery of the person who pawned the Diamond. And let me
hear what the Sergeant's experience says to that."

So we parted.

Early the next morning, I set forth for the little town of Dorking--
the place of Sergeant Cuff's retirement, as indicated to me
by Betteredge.

Inquiring at the hotel, I received the necessary directions
for finding the Sergeant's cottage. It was approached
by a quiet bye-road, a little way out of the town, and it
stood snugly in the middle of its own plot of garden ground,
protected by a good brick wall at the back and the sides,
and by a high quickset hedge in front. The gate, ornamented at
the upper part by smartly-painted trellis-work, was locked.
After ringing at the bell, I peered through the trellis-work,
and saw the great Cuff's favourite flower everywhere; blooming in
his garden, clustering over his door, looking in at his windows.
Far from the crimes and the mysteries of the great city,
the illustrious thief-taker was placidly living out the last Sybarite
years of his life, smothered in roses!

A decent elderly woman opened the gate to me, and at once annihilated
all the hopes I had built on securing the assistance of Sergeant Cuff.
He had started, only the day before, on a journey to Ireland.

"Has he gone there on business?"  I asked.

The woman smiled. "He has only one business now, sir," she said;
"and that's roses. Some great man's gardener in Ireland has found
out something new in the growing of roses--and Mr. Cuff's away to
inquire into it."

"Do you know when he will be back?"

"It's quite uncertain, sir. Mr. Cuff said he should come back directly,
or be away some time, just according as he found the new discovery
worth nothing, or worth looking into. If you have any message to leave
for him, I'll take care, sir, that he gets it."

I gave her my card, having first written on it in pencil:
"I have something to say about the Moonstone. Let me hear
from you as soon as you get back."  That done, there was
nothing left but to submit to circumstances, and return
to London.

In the irritable condition of my mind, at the time of which I am now writing,
the abortive result of my journey to the Sergeant's cottage simply aggravated
the restless impulse in me to be doing something. On the day of my return
from Dorking, I determined that the next morning should find me bent on
a new effort at forcing my way, through all obstacles, from the darkness
to the light.

What form was my next experiment to take?

If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was considering
that question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts,
he would, no doubt, have declared that the German side of me was,
on this occasion, my uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps
possible that my German training was in some degree responsible for
the labyrinth of useless speculations in which I now involved myself.
For the greater part of the night, I sat smoking, and building up theories,
one more profoundly improbable than another. When I did get to sleep,
my waking fancies pursued me in dreams. I rose the next morning,
with Objective-Subjective and Subjective-Objective inextricably entangled
together in my mind; and I began the day which was to witness my next effort
at practical action of some kind, by doubting whether I had any sort
of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to consider any sort of thing
(the Diamond included) as existing at all.

How long I might have remained lost in the mist of my own metaphysics,
if I had been left to extricate myself, it is impossible for me to say.
As the event proved, accident came to my rescue, and happily delivered me.
I happened to wear, that morning, the same coat which I had worn on the day
of my interview with Rachel. Searching for something else in one of
the pockets, I came upon a crumpled piece of paper, and, taking it out,
found Betteredge's forgotten letter in my hand.

It seemed hard on my good old friend to leave him without a reply.
I went to my writing-table, and read his letter again.

A letter which has nothing of the slightest importance in it,
is not always an easy letter to answer. Betteredge's present
effort at corresponding with me came within this category.
Mr. Candy's assistant, otherwise Ezra Jennings, had told
his master that he had seen me; and Mr. Candy, in his turn,
wanted to see me and say something to me, when I was next in
the neighbourhood of Frizinghall. What was to be said in answer
to that, which would be worth the paper it was written on?
I sat idly drawing likenesses from memory of Mr. Candy's
remarkable-looking assistant, on the sheet of paper which I
had vowed to dedicate to Betteredge--until it suddenly
occurred to me that here was the irrepressible Ezra Jennings
getting in my way again! I threw a dozen portraits, at least,
of the man with the piebald hair (the hair in every case,
remarkably like), into the waste-paper basket--and then
and there, wrote my answer to Betteredge. It was a perfectly
commonplace letter--but it had one excellent effect on me.
The effort of writing a few sentences, in plain English,
completely cleared my mind of the cloudy nonsense which had filled it
since the previous day.

Devoting myself once more to the elucidation of the impenetrable
puzzle which my own position presented to me, I now tried to meet
the difficulty by investigating it from a plainly practical point of view.
The events of the memorable night being still unintelligible to me,
I looked a little farther back, and searched my memory of the earlier
hours of the birthday for any incident which might prove of some
assistance to me in finding the clue.

Had anything happened while Rachel and I were finishing the painted
door? or, later, when I rode over to Frizinghall? or afterwards,
when I went back with Godfrey Ablewhite and his sisters? or,
later again, when I put the Moonstone into Rachel's hands? or,
later still, when the company came, and we all assembled round
the dinner-table? My memory disposed of that string of questions
readily enough, until I came to the last. Looking back at the social
event of the birthday dinner, I found myself brought to a standstill
at the outset of the inquiry. I was not even capable of accurately
remembering the number of the guests who had sat at the same table
with me.

To feel myself completely at fault here, and to conclude, thereupon,
that the incidents of the dinner might especially repay the trouble of
investigating them, formed parts of the same mental process, in my case.
I believe other people, in a similar situation, would have reasoned as I did.
When the pursuit of our own interests causes us to become objects of
inquiry to ourselves, we are naturally suspicious of what we don't know.
Once in possession of the names of the persons who had been present at
the dinner, I resolved--as a means of enriching the deficient resources
of my own memory--to appeal to the memory of the rest of the guests;
to write down all that they could recollect of the social events of
the birthday; and to test the result, thus obtained, by the light of what
had happened afterwards, when the company had left the house.

This last and newest of my many contemplated experiments in the art
of inquiry--which Betteredge would probably have attributed to the
clear-headed, or French, side of me being uppermost for the moment--
may fairly claim record here, on its own merits. Unlikely as it may seem,
I had now actually groped my way to the root of the matter at last.
All I wanted was a hint to guide me in the right direction at starting.
Before another day had passed over my head, that hint was given me by one of
the company who had been present at the birthday feast!

With the plan of proceeding which I now had in view, it was
first necessary to possess the complete list of the guests.
This I could easily obtain from Gabriel Betteredge.
I determined to go back to Yorkshire on that day, and to begin my
contemplated investigation the next morning.

It was just too late to start by the train which left London before noon.
There was no alternative but to wait, nearly three hours, for the departure of
the next train. Was there anything I could do in London, which might usefully
occupy this interval of time?

My thoughts went back again obstinately to the birthday dinner.

Though I had forgotten the numbers, and, in many cases,
the names of the guests, I remembered readily enough that by far
the larger proportion of them came from Frizinghall, or from
its neighbourhood. But the larger proportion was not all.
Some few of us were not regular residents in the country.
I myself was one of the few. Mr. Murthwaite was another.
Godfrey Ablewhite was a third. Mr. Bruff--no: I called to mind
that business had prevented Mr. Bruff from making one of the party.
Had any ladies been present, whose usual residence was in London?
I could only remember Miss Clack as coming within this
latter category. However, here were three of the guests,
at any rate, whom it was clearly advisable for me to see
before I left town. I drove off at once to Mr. Bruff's office;
not knowing the addresses of the persons of whom I was in search,
and thinking it probable that he might put me in the way of
finding them.

Mr. Bruff proved to be too busy to give me more than a minute of his
valuable time. In that minute, however, he contrived to dispose--
in the most discouraging manner--of all the questions I had to put
to him.

In the first place, he considered my newly-discovered method of finding a clue
to the mystery as something too purely fanciful to be seriously discussed.
In the second, third, and fourth places, Mr. Murthwaite was now on his way
back to the scene of his past adventures; Miss Clack had suffered losses,
and had settled, from motives of economy, in France; Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite might, or might not, be discoverable somewhere in London.
Suppose I inquired at his club? And suppose I excused Mr. Bruff, if he went
back to his business and wished me good morning?

The field of inquiry in London, being now so narrowed as only to include
the one necessity of discovering Godfrey's address, I took the lawyer's hint,
and drove to his club.

In the hall, I met with one of the members, who was an old friend
of my cousin's, and who was also an acquaintance of my own.
This gentleman, after enlightening me on the subject of
Godfrey's address, told me of two recent events in his life,
which were of some importance in themselves, and which had not
previously reached my ears.

It appeared that Godfrey, far from being discouraged by Rachel's
withdrawal from her engagement to him had made matrimonial advances
soon afterwards to another young lady, reputed to be a great heiress.
His suit had prospered, and his marriage had been considered
as a settled and certain thing. But, here again, the engagement
had been suddenly and unexpectedly broken off--owing, it was said,
on this occasion, to a serious difference of opinion between the
bridegroom and the lady's father, on the question of settlements.

As some compensation for this second matrimonial disaster,
Godfrey had soon afterwards found himself the object of fond
pecuniary remembrance, on the part of one of his many admirers.
A rich old lady--highly respected at the Mothers'
Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and a great friend of
Miss Clack's (to whom she left nothing but a mourning ring)--
had bequeathed to the admirable and meritorious Godfrey
a legacy of five thousand pounds. After receiving this
handsome addition to his own modest pecuniary resources,
he had been heard to say that he felt the necessity
of getting a little respite from his charitable labours,
and that his doctor prescribed "a run on the Continent,
as likely to be productive of much future benefit to his health."
If I wanted to see him, it would be advisable to lose no time in
paying my contemplated visit.

I went, then and there, to pay my visit.

The same fatality which had made me just one day too late in calling
on Sergeant Cuff, made me again one day too late in calling on Godfrey.
He had left London, on the previous morning, by the tidal train,
for Dover. He was to cross to Ostend; and his servant believed he was
going on to Brussels. The time of his return was rather uncertain;
but I might be sure he would be away at least three months.

I went back to my lodgings a little depressed in spirits.
Three of the guests at the birthday dinner--and those three
all exceptionally intelligent people--were out of my reach,
at the very time when it was most important to be able to
communicate with them. My last hopes now rested on Betteredge,
and on the friends of the late Lady Verinder whom I might still
find living in the neighbourhood of Rachel's country house.

On this occasion, I travelled straight to Frizinghall--
the town being now the central point in my field of inquiry.
I arrived too late in the evening to be able to communicate
with Betteredge. The next morning, I sent a messenger
with a letter, requesting him to join me at the hotel, at his
earliest convenience.

Having taken the precaution--partly to save time, partly to
accommodate Betteredge--of sending my messenger in a fly,
I had a reasonable prospect, if no delays occurred,
of seeing the old man within less than two hours from
the time when I had sent for him. During this interval,
I arranged to employ myself in opening my contemplated inquiry,
among the guests present at the birthday dinner who were
personally known to me, and who were easily within my reach.
These were my relatives, the Ablewhites, and Mr. Candy.
The doctor had expressed a special wish to see me,
and the doctor lived in the next street. So to Mr. Candy I
went first.

After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated finding traces
in the doctor's face of the severe illness from which he had suffered.
But I was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in him when
he entered the room and shook hands with me. His eyes were dim; his hair
had turned completely grey; his face was wizen; his figure had shrunk.
I looked at the once lively, rattlepated, humorous little doctor--
associated in my remembrance with the perpetration of incorrigible
social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes--and I saw nothing
left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar smartness
in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his jewellery--
in cruel mockery of the change in him--were as gay and as gaudy
as ever.

"I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake," he said; "and I am heartily
glad to see you again at last. If there is anything I can do for you,
pray command my services, sir--pray command my services!"

He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eagerness,
and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire,
which he was perfectly--I might say childishly--incapable of concealing
from notice.

With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen
the necessity of entering into some sort of personal explanation,
before I could hope to interest people, mostly strangers to me,
in doing their best to assist my inquiry. On the journey
to Frizinghall I had arranged what my explanation was to be--
and I seized the opportunity now offered to me of trying the effect
of it on Mr. Candy.

"I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now,
on rather a romantic errand," I said. "It is a matter, Mr. Candy,
in which the late Lady Verinder's friends all took some interest.
You remember the mysterious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly
a year since? Circumstances have lately happened which lead
to the hope that it may yet be found--and I am interesting myself,
as one of the family, in recovering it. Among the obstacles
in my way, there is the necessity of collecting again all the
evidence which was discovered at the time, and more if possible.
There are peculiarities in this case which make it desirable
to revive my recollection of everything that happened in the house,
on the evening of Miss Verinder's birthday. And I venture to appeal
to her late mother's friends who were present on that occasion, to lend
me the assistance of their memories----"

I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases,
when I was suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy's
face that my experiment on him was a total failure.

The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingers
all the time I was speaking. His dim watery eyes were fixed on my face
with an expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see.
What he was thinking of, it was impossible to divine. The one thing
clearly visible was that I had failed, after the first two or three words,
in fixing his attention. The only chance of recalling him to himself appeared
to lie in changing the subject. I tried a new topic immediately.

"So much," I said, gaily, "for what brings me to Frizinghall! Now, Mr. Candy,
it's your turn. You sent me a message by Gabriel Betteredge----"

He left off picking at his fingers, and suddenly brightened up.

"Yes! yes! yes!" he exclaimed eagerly. "That's it! I sent you a message!"

"And Betteredge duly communicated it by letter," I went on.
You had something to say to me, the next time I was in
your neighbourhood. Well, Mr. Candy, here I am!"

"Here you are!" echoed the doctor. "And Betteredge was quite right.
I had something to say to you. That was my message. Betteredge is a
wonderful man. What a memory! At his age, what a memory!"

He dropped back into silence, and began picking at his fingers again.
Recollecting what I had heard from Betteredge about the effect of the fever
on his memory, I went on with the conversation, in the hope that I
might help him at starting.

"It's a long time since we met, I said. "We last saw each other
at the last birthday dinner my poor aunt was ever to give."

"That's it!" cried Mr. Candy. "The birthday dinner!"
He started impulsively to his feet, and looked at me.
A deep flush suddenly overspread his faded face, and he
abruptly sat down again, as if conscious of having betrayed
a weakness which he would fain have concealed. It was plain,
pitiably plain, that he was aware of his own defect of memory,
and that he was bent on hiding it from the observation of
his friends.

Thus far he had appealed to my compassion only. But the words
he had just said--few as they were--roused my curiosity
instantly to the highest pitch. The birthday dinner had
already become the one event in the past, at which I looked
back with strangely-mixed feelings of hope and distrust.
And here was the birthday dinner unmistakably proclaiming itself
as the subject on which Mr. Candy had something important
to say to me!

I attempted to help him out once more. But, this time,
my own interests were at the bottom of my compassionate motive,
and they hurried me on a little too abruptly, to the end I had
in view.

"It's nearly a year now," I said, "since we sat at that pleasant table.
Have you made any memorandum--in your diary, or otherwise--of what you wanted
to say to me?"

Mr. Candy understood the suggestion, and showed me that he understood it,
as an insult.

"I require no memorandum, Mr. Blake," he said, stiffly enough.
"I am not such a very old man, yet--and my memory (thank God)
is to be thoroughly depended on!"

It is needless to say that I declined to understand that he was offended
with me.

"I wish I could say the same of my memory," I answered.
"When I try to think of matters that are a year old, I seldom
find my remembrance as vivid as I could wish it to be.
Take the dinner at Lady Verinder's, for instance----"

Mr. Candy brightened up again, the moment the allusion passed my lips.

"Ah! the dinner, the dinner at Lady Verinder's!" he exclaimed,
more eagerly than ever. "I have got something to say to you
about that."

His eyes looked at me again with the painful expression of inquiry,
so wistful, so vacant, so miserably helpless to see. He was evidently
trying hard, and trying in vain, to recover the lost recollection.
"It was a very pleasant dinner," he burst out suddenly, with an air
of saying exactly what he wanted to say. "A very pleasant dinner,
Mr. Blake, wasn't it?"  He nodded and smiled, and appeared to think,
poor fellow, that he had succeeded in concealing the total failure
of his memory, by a well-timed exertion of his own presence
of mind.

It was so distressing that I at once shifted the talk--
deeply as I was interested in his recovering the lost remembrance--
to topics of local interest.

Here, he got on glibly enough. Trumpery little scandals
and quarrels in the town, some of them as much as a month old,
appeared to recur to his memory readily. He chattered on,
with something of the smooth gossiping fluency of former times.
But there were moments, even in the full flow of his talkativeness,
when he suddenly hesitated--looked at me for a moment with the vacant
inquiry once more in his eyes--controlled himself--and went on again.
I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it is surely nothing
less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies,
to absorb in silent resignation the news of a country town?)
until the clock on the chimney-piece told me that my visit
had been prolonged beyond half an hour. Having now some right
to consider the sacrifice as complete, I rose to take leave.
As we shook hands, Mr. Candy reverted to the birthday festival of his
own accord.

"I am so glad we have met again," he said. "I had it on my mind--
I really had it on my mind, Mr. Blake, to speak to you.
About the dinner at Lady Verinder's, you know? A pleasant dinner--
really a pleasant dinner now, wasn't it?"

On repeating the phrase, he seemed to feel hardly as certain
of having prevented me from suspecting his lapse of memory,
as he had felt on the first occasion. The wistful look clouded
his face again: and, after apparently designing to accompany me
to the street door, he suddenly changed his mind, rang the bell
for the servant, and remained in the drawing-room.

I went slowly down the doctor's stairs, feeling the disheartening
conviction that he really had something to say which it was vitally
important to me to hear, and that he was morally incapable of saying it.
The effort of remembering that he wanted to speak to me was,
but too evidently, the only effort that his enfeebled memory was now
able to achieve.

Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had turned a corner on
my way to the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere on the ground
floor of the house, and a gentle voice said behind me:--

"I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly changed?"

I turned round, and found myself face to face with Ezra Jennings.

CHAPTER IX

The doctor's pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street
door open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning
light fell full on the face of Mr. Candy's assistant when I turned,
and looked at him.

It was impossible to dispute Betteredge's assertion that the appearance
of Ezra Jennings, speaking from a popular point of view, was against him.
His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones,
his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling
contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old
and young both together--were all more or less calculated to produce
an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger's mind. And yet--
feeling this as I certainly did--it is not to be denied that Ezra
Jennings made some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it
impossible to resist. While my knowledge of the world warned me to answer
the question which he had put, acknowledging that I did indeed find
Mr. Candy sadly changed, and then to proceed on my way out of the house--
my interest in Ezra Jennings held me rooted to the place, and gave
him the opportunity of speaking to me in private about his employer,
for which he had been evidently on the watch.

"Are you walking my way, Mr. Jennings?"  I said, observing that he held
his hat in his hand. "I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite."

Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was walking
my way.

We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl--
who was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning
on my way out--received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings,
relating to the time at which he might be expected to return,
with pursed-up lips, and with eyes which ostentatiously looked
anywhere rather than look in his face. The poor wretch was evidently
no favourite in the house. Out of the house, I had Betteredge's
word for it that he was unpopular everywhere. "What a life!"
I thought to myself, as we descended the doctor's doorsteps.

Having already referred to Mr. Candy's illness on his side, Ezra Jennings
now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the subject.
His silence said significantly, "It's your turn now."  I, too, had my
reasons for referring to the doctor's illness: and I readily accepted
the responsibility of speaking first.

"Judging by the change I see in him," I began, "Mr. Candy's
illness must have been far more serious that I had supposed?"

"It is almost a miracle," said Ezra Jennings, "that he lived through it."

"Is his memory never any better than I have found it to-day?
He has been trying to speak to me----"

"Of something which happened before he was taken ill?" asked the assistant,
observing that I hesitated.

"Yes."

"His memory of events, at that past time, is hopelessly enfeebled,"
said Ezra Jennings. "It is almost to be deplored, poor fellow,
that even the wreck of it remains. While he remembers dimly
plans that he formed--things, here and there, that he had to say
or do before his illness--he is perfectly incapable of recalling
what the plans were, or what the thing was that he had to say or do.
He is painfully conscious of his own deficiency, and painfully anxious,
as you must have seen, to hide it from observation. If he could
only have recovered in a complete state of oblivion as to the past,
he would have been a happier man. Perhaps we should all be happier,"
he added, with a sad smile, "if we could but completely forget!"

"There are some events surely in all men's lives," I replied,
"the memory of which they would be unwilling entirely to lose?"

"That is, I hope, to be said of most men, Mr. Blake. I am afraid
it cannot truly be said of ALL. Have you any reason to suppose
that the lost remembrance which Mr. Candy tried to recover--
while you were speaking to him just now--was a remembrance which it
was important to YOU that he should recall?"

In saying those words, he had touched, of his own accord,
on the very point upon which I was anxious to consult him.
The interest I felt in this strange man had impelled me,
in the first instance, to give him the opportunity of speaking
to me; reserving what I might have to say, on my side,
in relation to his employer, until I was first satisfied that
he was a person in whose delicacy and discretion I could trust.
The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient
to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman.
He had what I may venture to describe as the UNSOUGHT
SELF-POSSESSION, which is a sure sign of good breeding,
not in England only, but everywhere else in the civilised world.
Whatever the object which he had in view, in putting
the question that he had just addressed to me, I felt
no doubt that I was justified--so far--in answering him
without reserve.

"I believe I have a strong interest," I said, "in tracing
the lost remembrance which Mr. Candy was unable to recall.
May I ask whether you can suggest to me any method by which I
might assist his memory?"

Ezra Jennings looked at me, with a sudden flash of interest
in his dreamy brown eyes.

"Mr. Candy's memory is beyond the reach of assistance," he said.
"I have tried to help it often enough since his recovery, to be able
to speak positively on that point."

This disappointed me; and I owned it.

"I confess you led me to hope for a less discouraging answer than that,"
I said.

Ezra Jennings smiled. "It may not, perhaps, be a final answer, Mr. Blake.
It may be possible to trace Mr. Candy's lost recollection, without the
necessity of appealing to Mr. Candy himself."

"Indeed? Is it an indiscretion, on my part, to ask how?"

"By no means. My only difficulty in answering your question,
is the difficulty of explaining myself. May I trust to
your patience, if I refer once more to Mr. Candy's illness:
and if I speak of it this time without sparing you certain
professional details?"

"Pray go on! You have interested me already in hearing the details."

My eagerness seemed to amuse--perhaps, I might rather say, to please him.
He smiled again. We had by this time left the last houses in the town
behind us. Ezra Jennings stopped for a moment, and picked some wild
flowers from the hedge by the roadside. "How beautiful they are!"
he said, simply, showing his little nosegay to me. "And how few people in
England seem to admire them as they deserve!"

"You have not always been in England?"  I said.

"No. I was born, and partly brought up, in one of our colonies.
My father was an Englishman; but my mother----
We are straying away from our subject, Mr. Blake; and
it is my fault. The truth is, I have associations with these modest little
hedgeside flowers----" It doesn't matter; we were speaking of Mr. Candy.
To Mr. Candy let us return."

Connecting the few words about himself which thus reluctantly
escaped him, with the melancholy view of life which led him to place
the conditions of human happiness in complete oblivion of the past,
I felt satisfied that the story which I had read in his face was,
in two particulars at least, the story that it really told.
He had suffered as few men suffer; and there was the mixture of some
foreign race in his English blood.

"You have heard, I dare say, of the original cause of Mr. Candy's illness?"
he resumed. "The night of Lady Verinder's dinner-party was a night
of heavy rain. My employer drove home through it in his gig,
and reached the house wetted to the skin. He found an urgent message
from a patient, waiting for him; and he most unfortunately went at once
to visit the sick person, without stopping to change his clothes.
I was myself professionally detained, that night, by a case at some
distance from Frizinghall. When I got back the next morning, I found
Mr. Candy's groom waiting in great alarm to take me to his master's room.
By that time the mischief was done; the illness had set in."

"The illness has only been described to me, in general terms, as a fever,"
I said.

"I can add nothing which will make the description more accurate,"
answered Ezra Jennings. "From first to last the fever assumed
no specific form. I sent at once to two of Mr. Candy's medical
friends in the town, both physicians, to come and give me their
opinion of the case. They agreed with me that it looked serious;
but they both strongly dissented from the view I took of the treatment.
We differed entirely in the conclusions which we drew from
the patient's pulse. The two doctors, arguing from the rapidity
of the beat, declared that a lowering treatment was the only treatment
to be adopted. On my side, I admitted the rapidity of the pulse,
but I also pointed to its alarming feebleness as indicating
an exhausted condition of the system, and as showing a plain
necessity for the administration of stimulants. The two doctors
were for keeping him on gruel, lemonade, barley-water, and so on.
I was for giving him champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine.
A serious difference of opinion, as you see! a difference between
two physicians of established local repute, and a stranger
who was only an assistant in the house. For the first few days,
I had no choice but to give way to my elders and betters;
the patient steadily sinking all the time. I made a second attempt
to appeal to the plain, undeniably plain, evidence of the pulse.
Its rapidity was unchecked, and its feebleness had increased.
The two doctors took offence at my obstinacy. They said,
"Mr. Jennings, either we manage this case, or you manage it.
Which is it to be?"  I said, "Gentlemen, give me five minutes
to consider, and that plain question shall have a plain reply."
When the time expired, I was ready with my answer. I said,
"You positively refuse to try the stimulant treatment?"
They refused in so many words. "I mean to try it at once,
gentlemen."--"Try it, Mr. Jennings, and we withdraw from the case."
I sent down to the cellar for a bottle of champagne; and I administered
half a tumbler-full of it to the patient with my own hand.
The two physicians took up their hats in silence, and left the
house."

"You had assumed a serious responsibility," I said. In your place,
I am afraid I should have shrunk from it."

"In my place, Mr. Blake, you would have remembered that Mr. Candy
had taken you into his employment, under circumstances which made you
his debtor for life. In my place, you would have seen him sinking,
hour by hour; and you would have risked anything, rather than let
the one man on earth who had befriended you, die before your eyes.
Don't suppose that I had no sense of the terrible position in which I
had placed myself! There were moments when I felt all the misery
of my friendlessness, all the peril of my dreadful responsibility.
If I had been a happy man, if I had led a prosperous life,
I believe I should have sunk under the task I had imposed on myself.
But I had no happy time to look back at, no past peace of mind
to force itself into contrast with my present anxiety and suspense--
and I held firm to my resolution through it all. I took an interval
in the middle of the day, when my patient's condition was at its best,
for the repose I needed. For the rest of the four-and-twenty hours,
as long as his life was in danger, I never left his bedside.
Towards sunset, as usual in such cases, the delirium incidental
to the fever came on. It lasted more or less through the night;
and then intermitted, at that terrible time in the early morning--
from two o'clock to five--when the vital energies even of the healthiest
of us are at their lowest. It is then that Death gathers in his
human harvest most abundantly. It was then that Death and I fought
our fight over the bed, which should have the man who lay on it.
I never hesitated in pursuing the treatment on which I
had staked everything. When wine failed, I tried brandy.
When the other stimulants lost their influence, I doubled the dose.
After an interval of suspense--the like of which I hope to God
I shall never feel again--there came a day when the rapidity of
the pulse slightly, but appreciably, diminished; and, better still,
there came also a change in the beat--an unmistakable change
to steadiness and strength. THEN, I knew that I had saved him;
and then I own I broke down. I laid the poor fellow's wasted hand
back on the bed, and burst out crying. An hysterical relief,
Mr. Blake--nothing more! Physiology says, and says truly,
that some men are born with female constitutions--and I am one of
them!"

He made that bitterly professional apology for his tears,
speaking quietly and unaffectedly, as he had spoken throughout.
His tone and manner, from beginning to end, showed him to
be especially, almost morbidly, anxious not to set himself up
as an object of interest to me.

"You may well ask, why I have wearied you with all these details?"
he went on. "It is the only way I can see, Mr. Blake,
of properly introducing to you what I have to say next.
Now you know exactly what my position was, at the time
of Mr. Candy's illness, you will the more readily understand
the sore need I had of lightening the burden on my mind
by giving it, at intervals, some sort of relief. I have had
the presumption to occupy my leisure, for some years past,
in writing a book, addressed to the members of my profession--
a book on the intricate and delicate subject of the brain and
the nervous system. My work will probably never be finished;
and it will certainly never be published. It has none the less
been the friend of many lonely hours; and it helped me to while
away the anxious time--the time of waiting, and nothing else--
at Mr. Candy's bedside. I told you he was delirious,
I think? And I mentioned the time at which his delirium
came on?"

"Yes."

"Well, I had reached a section of my book, at that time,
which touched on this same question of delirium. I won't trouble
you at any length with my theory on the subject--I will confine
myself to telling you only what it is your present interest to know.
It has often occurred to me in the course of my medical practice,
to doubt whether we can justifiably infer--in cases of delirium--
that the loss of the faculty of speaking connectedly, implies of
necessity the loss of the faculty of thinking connectedly as well.
Poor Mr. Candy's illness gave me an opportunity of putting this
doubt to the test. I understand the art of writing in shorthand;
and I was able to take down the patient's "wanderings", exactly as they
fell from his lips.--Do you see, Mr. Blake, what I am coming to
at last?"

I saw it clearly, and waited with breathless interest to hear more.

"At odds and ends of time," Ezra Jennings went on, "I reproduced
my shorthand notes, in the ordinary form of writing--leaving large
spaces between the broken phrases, and even the single words,
as they had fallen disconnectedly from Mr. Candy's lips.
I then treated the result thus obtained, on something like the
principle which one adopts in putting together a child's 'puzzle.'
It is all confusion to begin with; but it may be all brought
into order and shape, if you can only find the right way.
Acting on this plan, I filled in each blank space on the paper,
with what the words or phrases on either side of it suggested
to me as the speaker's meaning; altering over and over again,
until my additions followed naturally on the spoken words
which came before them, and fitted naturally into the spoken
words which came after them. The result was, that I not
only occupied in this way many vacant and anxious hours,
but that I arrived at something which was (as it seemed to me)
a confirmation of the theory that I held. In plainer words,
after putting the broken sentences together I found the superior
faculty of thinking going on, more or less connectedly,
in my patient's mind, while the inferior faculty of
expression was in a state of almost complete incapacity
and confusion."

"One word!"  I interposed eagerly. "Did my name occur in any
of his wanderings?"

"You shall hear, Mr. Blake. Among my written proofs of
the assertion which I have just advanced--or, I ought to say,
among the written experiments, tending to put my assertion
to the proof--there IS one, in which your name occurs.
For nearly the whole of one night, Mr. Candy's mind
was occupied with SOMETHING between himself and you.
I have got the broken words, as they dropped from his lips,
on one sheet of paper. And I have got the links of my own
discovering which connect those words together, on another
sheet of paper. The product (as the arithmeticians would say)
is an intelligible statement--first, of something actually done
in the past; secondly, of something which Mr. Candy contemplated
doing in the future, if his illness had not got in the way,
and stopped him. The question is whether this does, or does not,
represent the lost recollection which he vainly attempted to find
when you called on him this morning?"

"Not a doubt of it!"  I answered. "Let us go back directly,
and look at the papers!"

"Quite impossible, Mr. Blake."

"Why?"

"Put yourself in my position for a moment," said Ezra Jennings.
"Would you disclose to another person what had dropped unconsciously
from the lips of your suffering patient and your helpless friend,
without first knowing that there was a necessity to justify you
in opening your lips?"

I felt that he was unanswerable, here; but I tried to argue
the question, nevertheless.

"My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe," I replied,
"would depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature
to compromise my friend or not."

"I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the question,
long since," said Ezra Jennings. "Wherever my notes included anything which
Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes have been destroyed.
My manuscript experiments at my friend's bedside, include nothing, now,
which he would have hesitated to communicate to others, if he had recovered
the use of his memory. In your case, I have every reason to suppose that my
notes contain something which he actually wished to say to you

"And yet, you hesitate?"

"And yet, I hesitate. Remember the circumstances under which I
obtained the information which I possess! Harmless as it is,
I cannot prevail upon myself to give it up to you, unless you
first satisfy me that there is a reason for doing so.
He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and he was so helplessly
dependent upon Me! Is it too much to ask, if I request you only
to hint to me what your interest is in the lost recollection--
or what you believe that lost recollection to be?"

To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his
manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly
acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond.
Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest
which I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable
reluctance to disclose the degrading position in which I stood.
I took refuge once more in the explanatory phrases with which I had
prepared myself to meet the curiosity of strangers

This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention
on the part of the person to whom I addressed myself.
Ezra Jennings listened patiently, even anxiously, until I
had done.

"I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake,
only to disappoint them," he said. "Throughout the whole
period of Mr. Candy's illness, from first to last, not one
word about the Diamond escaped his lips. The matter with
which I heard him connect your name has, I can assure you,
no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the recovery
of Miss Verinder's jewel."

We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway
along which we had been walking branched off into two roads.
One led to Mr. Ablewhite's house, and the other to a moorland
village some two or three miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at
the road which led to the village.

"My way lies in this direction," he said. "I am really and truly sorry,
Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you."

His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes
rested on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest.
He bowed, and went, without another word, on his way to
the village.

For a minute or more I stood and watched him, walking farther
and farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him
what I now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search.
He turned, after walking on a little way, and looked back.
Seeing me still standing at the place where we had parted, he stopped,
as if doubting whether I might not wish to speak to him again.
There was no time for me to reason out my own situation--
to remind myself that I was losing my opportunity, at what might
be the turning point of my life, and all to flatter nothing
more important than my own self-esteem! There was only time
to call him back first, and to think afterwards. I suspect I am
one of the rashest of existing men. I called him back--and then
I said to myself, "Now there is no help for it. I must tell him
the truth!"

He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.

"Mr. Jennings," I said. "I have not treated you quite fairly.
My interest in tracing Mr. Candy's lost recollection is not
the interest of recovering the Moonstone. A serious personal
matter is at the bottom of my visit to Yorkshire. I have but one
excuse for not having dealt frankly with you in this matter.
It is more painful to me than I can say, to mention to anybody
what my position really is."

Ezra Jennings looked at me with the first appearance of embarrassment
which I had seen in him yet.

"I have no right, Mr. Blake, and no wish," he said, "to intrude myself into
your private affairs. Allow me to ask your pardon, on my side, for having
(most innocently) put you to a painful test."

"You have a perfect right," I rejoined, "to fix the terms on which you
feel justified in revealing what you heard at Mr. Candy's bedside.
I understand and respect the delicacy which influences you in this matter.
How can I expect to be taken into your confidence if I decline
to admit you into mine? You ought to know, and you shall know,
why I am interested in discovering what Mr. Candy wanted to say to me.
If I turn out to be mistaken in my anticipations, and if you prove unable
to help me when you are really aware of what I want, I shall trust to your
honour to keep my secret--and something tells me that I shall not trust
in vain."

"Stop, Mr. Blake. I have a word to say, which must be said
before you go any farther."  I looked at him in astonishment.
The grip of some terrible emotion seemed to have seized him,
and shaken him to the soul. His gipsy complexion had altered
to a livid greyish paleness; his eyes had suddenly become
wild and glittering; his voice had dropped to a tone--
low, stern, and resolute--which I now heard for the first time.
The latent resources in the man, for good or for evil--
it was hard, at that moment, to say which--leapt up in him
and showed themselves to me, with the suddenness of a flash
of light.

"Before you place any confidence in me," he went on, "you ought to know,
and you MUST know, under what circumstances I have been received into
Mr. Candy's house. It won't take long. I don't profess, sir, to tell
my story (as the phrase is) to any man. My story will die with me.
All I ask, is to be permitted to tell you, what I have told Mr. Candy.
If you are still in the mind, when you have heard that, to say what you
have proposed to say, you will command my attention and command my services.
Shall we walk on?"

The suppressed misery in his face silenced me. I answered his question
by a sign. We walked on.

After advancing a few hundred yards, Ezra Jennings stopped at a gap
in the rough stone wall which shut off the moor from the road,
at this part of it.

"Do you mind resting a little, Mr. Blake?" he asked. "I am not what I was--
and some things shake me."

I agreed of course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf on
the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side nearest
to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly desolate
view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds had gathered,
within the last half hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim.
The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still colourless--met us without
a smile.

We sat down in silence. Ezra Jennings laid aside his hat,
and passed his hand wearily over his forehead, wearily through
his startling white and black hair. He tossed his little
nosegay of wild flowers away from him, as if the remembrances
which it recalled were remembrances which hurt him now.

"Mr. Blake!" he said, suddenly. "You are in bad company.
The cloud of a horrible accusation has rested on me for years.
I tell you the worst at once. I am a man whose life is a wreck,
and whose character is gone."

I attempted to speak. He stopped me.

"No," he said. "Pardon me; not yet. Don't commit yourself to
expressions of sympathy which you may afterwards wish to recall.
I have mentioned an accusation which has rested on me for years.
There are circumstances in connexion with it that tell against me.
I cannot bring myself to acknowledge what the accusation is.
And I am incapable, perfectly incapable, of proving my innocence.
I can only assert my innocence. I assert it, sir, on my oath,
as a Christian. It is useless to appeal to my honour as a man."

He paused again. I looked round at him. He never looked at me in return.
His whole being seemed to be absorbed in the agony of recollecting, and in
the effort to speak.

"There is much that I might say," he went on,
"about the merciless treatment of me by my own family,
and the merciless enmity to which I have fallen a victim.
But the harm is done; the wrong is beyond all remedy.
I decline to weary or distress you, sir, if I can help it.
At the outset of my career in this country, the vile slander
to which I have referred struck me down at once and for ever.
I resigned my aspirations in my profession--obscurity was
the only hope left for me. I parted with the woman I loved--
how could I condemn her to share my disgrace? A medical
assistant's place offered itself, in a remote corner of England.
I got the place. It promised me peace; it promised me obscurity,
as I thought. I was wrong. Evil report, with time and
chance to help it, travels patiently, and travels far.
The accusation from which I had fled followed me.
I got warning of its approach. I was able to leave my
situation voluntarily, with the testimonials that I had earned.
They got me another situation in another remote district.
Time passed again; and again the slander that was death to my
character found me out. On this occasion I had no warning.
My employer said, "Mr. Jennings, I have no complaint to make
against you; but you must set yourself right, or leave me."
I had but one choice--I left him. It's useless to dwell on
what I suffered after that. I am only forty years old now.
Look at my face, and let it tell for me the story of some
miserable years. It ended in my drifting to this place,
and meeting with Mr. Candy. He wanted an assistant.
I referred him, on the question of capacity, to my last employer.
The question of character remained. I told him what I have told you--
and more. I warned him that there were difficulties in the way,
even if he believed me. "Here, as elsewhere," I said "I
scorn the guilty evasion of living under an assumed name:
I am no safer at Frizinghall than at other places from
the cloud that follows me, go where I may."  He answered,
"I don't do things by halves--I believe you, and I pity you.
If you will risk what may happen, I will risk it too."
God Almighty bless him! He has given me shelter,
he has given me employment, he has given me rest of mind--
and I have the certain conviction (I have had it for some
months past) that nothing will happen now to make him regret
it."

"The slander has died out?"  I said.

"The slander is as active as ever. But when it follows me here,
it will come too late."

"You will have left the place?"

"No, Mr. Blake--I shall be dead. For ten years past I
have suffered from an incurable internal complaint. I don't
disguise from you that I should have let the agony of it kill
me long since, but for one last interest in life, which makes
my existence of some importance to me still. I want to provide
for a person--very dear to me--whom I shall never see again.
My own little patrimony is hardly sufficient to make her independent
of the world. The hope, if I could only live long enough,
of increasing it to a certain sum, has impelled me to resist
the disease by such palliative means as I could devise.
The one effectual palliative in my case, is--opium. To that
all-potent and all-merciful drug I am indebted for a respite
of many years from my sentence of death. But even the virtues
of opium have their limit. The progress of the disease has
gradually forced me from the use of opium to the abuse of it.
I am feeling the penalty at last. My nervous system is shattered;
my nights are nights of horror. The end is not far off now.
Let it come--I have not lived and worked in vain. The little
sum is nearly made up; and I have the means of completing it,
if my last reserves of life fail me sooner than I expect.
I hardly know how I have wandered into telling you this.
I don't think I am mean enough to appeal to your pity.
Perhaps, I fancy you may be all the readier to believe me,
if you know that what I have said to you, I have said
with the certain knowledge in me that I am a dying man.
There is no disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me.
I have attempted to make my poor friend's loss of memory
the means of bettering my acquaintance with you. I have
speculated on the chance of your feeling a passing curiosity
about what he wanted to say, and of my being able to satisfy it.
Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on you?
Perhaps there is some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived
has his bitter moments when he ponders over human destiny.
You have youth, health, riches, a place in the world, a prospect
before you. You, and such as you, show me the sunny side of
human life, and reconcile me with the world that I am leaving,
before I go. However this talk between us may end, I shall not
forget that you have done me a kindness in doing that. It rests
with you, sir, to say what you proposed saying, or to wish me good
morning."

I had but one answer to make to that appeal. Without a moment's hesitation
I told him the truth, as unreservedly as I have told it in these pages.

He started to his feet, and looked at me with breathless eagerness
as I approached the leading incident of my story.

"It is certain that I went into the room," I said; "it is certain that I
took the Diamond. I can only meet those two plain facts by declaring that,
do what I might, I did it without my own knowledge----"

Ezra Jennings caught me excitedly by the arm.

"Stop!" he said. "You have suggested more to me than you suppose.
Have you ever been accustomed to the use of opium?"

"I never tasted it in my life."

"Were your nerves out of order, at this time last year?
Were you unusually restless and irritable?"

"Yes."

"Did you sleep badly?"

"Wretchedly. Many nights I never slept at all."

"Was the birthday night an exception? Try, and remember.
Did you sleep well on that one occasion?"

"I do remember! I slept soundly."

He dropped my arm as suddenly as he had taken it--and looked at me
with the air of a man whose mind was relieved of the last doubt
that rested on it.

"This is a marked day in your life, and in mine," he said, gravely. "I am
absolutely certain, Mr. Blake, of one thing--I have got what Mr. Candy wanted
to say to you this morning, in the notes that I took at my patient's bedside.
Wait! that is not all. I am firmly persuaded that I can prove you to have
been unconscious of what you were about, when you entered the room and took
the Diamond. Give me time to think, and time to question you. I believe
the vindication of your innocence is in my hands!"

"Explain yourself, for God's sake! What do you mean?"

In the excitement of our colloquy, we had walked on a few steps,
beyond the clump of dwarf trees which had hitherto screened us from view.
Before Ezra Jennings could answer me, he was hailed from the high road
by a man, in great agitation, who had been evidently on the look-out
for him.

"I am coming," he called back; "I am coming as fast as I can!"
He turned to me. "There is an urgent case waiting for me at
the village yonder; I ought to have been there half an hour since--
I must attend to it at once. Give me two hours from this time,
and call at Mr. Candy's again--and I will engage to be ready
for you."

"How am I to wait!"  I exclaimed, impatiently. "Can't you quiet
my mind by a word of explanation before we part?"