 While I was in this bewildered frame of mind, sorely needing a little quiet time by myself to put me right again, my daughter Penelope got in my way, just as her late mother used to get in my way on the stairs, and instantly summoned me to tell her all that had passed at the conference between Mr. Franklin and me. Under present circumstances the one thing to be done was to clap the extinguisher on Penelope's curiosity on the spot. I accordingly replied that Mr. Franklin and I had both talked of foreign politics till we could talk no longer, and had then mutually fallen asleep in the heat of the sun. Try that sort of answer when your wife or your daughter next worries you with an awkward question at an awkward time, and depend on the natural sweetness of women for kissing and making it up again at the next opportunity. The afternoon wore on, and my lady and Miss Rachel came back. Needless to say how astonished they were when they heard that Mr. Franklin Blake had arrived, and had gone off again on horseback. Needless also to say that they asked awkward questions directly, and that the foreign politics and the falling asleep in the sun wouldn't serve a second time over with them. Being at the end of my invention, I said that Mr. Franklin's arrival by the early train was entirely attributable to one of Mr. Franklin's freaks. Being asked upon that, whether his galloping off again on horseback was another of Mr. Franklin's freaks, I said yes it was, and slipped out of it, I think very cleverly in that way. Having got over my difficulties with the ladies, I found more difficulties waiting for me when I went back to my own room. In came Penelope with the natural sweetness of women to kiss and make it up again, and with the natural curiosity of women to ask another question. This time she only wanted me to tell her what the matter was with our second housemaid, Rosanna Spearman. After leaving Mr. Franklin and me at the shivering sand, Rosanna, it appeared, had returned to the house in a very unaccountable state of mind. She had turned, if Penelope was to be believed, all the colours of the rainbow. She had been merry without reason, and sad without reason. In one breath she had asked hundreds of questions about Mr. Franklin Blake, and in another breath she had been angry with Penelope for presuming to suppose that a strange gentleman could possess any interest for her. She had been surprised, smiling, and scribbling Mr. Franklin's name inside her work-box. She had been surprised again, crying and looking at her deformed shoulder in the glass. Had she and Mr. Franklin known anything of each other before to-day? Quite impossible. Had they heard anything of each other? Impossible again. I could speak to Mr. Franklin's astonishment as genuine when he saw how the girls stared at him. Penelope could speak to the girls' inquisitiveness as genuine when she asked questions about Mr. Franklin. The conference between us, conducted in this way, was tiresome enough until my daughter suddenly ended it by bursting out with what I thought the most monstrous supposition I had ever heard in my life. Father, says Penelope, quite seriously. There's only one explanation of it. Rosanna has fallen in love with Mr. Franklin Blake at first sight. You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first sight, and have thought it natural enough, but a housemaid, out of a reformatory, with a plain face and a deformed shoulder, falling in love at first sight with a gentleman who comes on a visit to her mistress's house, match me that in the way of an absurdity out of any story book in Christendom, if you can. I laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks. Penelope resented my merriment in a rather strange way. I never knew you cruel before, Father, she said, very gently, and went out. My girl's words fell upon me like a splash of cold water. I was savaged with myself for feeling uneasy in myself the moment she had spoken them, but so it was. We will change the subject, if you please. I am sorry I drifted into writing about it, and not without reason, as you will see when we have gone on together a little further. The evening came, and the dressing-bell for dinner rang before Mr. Franklin returned from Fritzing-hall. I took his hot water up to his room myself, expecting to hear, after this extraordinary delay, that something had happened. To my great disappointment, and no doubt to yours also, nothing had happened. He had not met with the Indians, either going or returning. He had deposited the moonstone in the bank, describing it merely as a valuable of great price, and he had got the receipt for it safe in his pocket. I went downstairs, feeling that this was a rather a flat ending after all our excitement about the diamond earlier in the day. How the meeting between Mr. Franklin and his aunt and his cousin went off is more than I can tell you. I would have given something to have waited at table that day, but, in my position in the household, waiting at dinner, except on high-family festivals, was letting down my dignity in the eyes of the other servants, a thing which my lady considered me quite prone enough to do already without seeking occasions for it. The news brought to me from the upper regions that evening came from Penelope and the footman. Penelope mentioned that she had never known Miss Rachel so particular about the dressing of her hair, and had never seen her look so bright and pretty as she did when she went down to meet Mr. Franklin in the drawing-room. The footman's report was that the preservation of a respectful composure in the presence of his bettors, and the waiting on Mr. Franklin Blake at dinner, were two of the hardest things to reconcile with each other that had ever tried his training in service. Later in the evening we heard them singing and playing duets. Mr. Franklin piping high, Miss Rachel piping higher, and my lady on the piano following them, as it were, over hedge and ditch, and seeing them safe through it in a manner most wonderful and pleasant to hear through the open windows on the terrace at night. Later still I went to Mr. Franklin in the smoking-room with the soda-water and brandy, and found that Miss Rachel had put the diamond clean out of his head. She's the most charming girl I've ever seen since I came back from England, was all that I could extract from him, when I endeavored to lead the conversation to more serious things. Towards midnight I went round the house to lock up, accompanied by my second-in-command, Samuel the footman, as usual. When all the doors were made fast except the side door that opened on the terrace, I sensed Samuel to bed and stepped out for a breath of fresh air, before I too went to my bed in my turn. The night was still and close, and the moon was at the full in the heavens. It was so silent out of doors, that I heard from time to time very faint and low, the fall of the sea, as the ground-swell heaved it in on the sand-bank near the mouth of our little bay. As the house stood, the terrace side was the dark side, but the broad moonlight showed fair on the gravel walk that ran along the next side to the terrace. Going this way, after looking up at the sky, I saw the shadow of a person in the moonlight thrown forward from behind the corner of the house. Being old and sly, I forbore to call out, but being also, unfortunately, old and heavy, my feet betrayed me on the gravel. Before I could steal suddenly round the corner, as I had proposed, I heard lighter feet than mine, and more than one pair of them as I thought, retreating in a hurry. By the time I had got to the corner, the trespassers, whoever they were, had run to the shrubbery off the side of the walk, and were hidden from sight among the thick trees and bushes in that part of the grounds. From the shrubbery they could easily make their way over our fence into the road. If I had been forty years younger, I might have had a chance of catching them before they got clear of our premises. As it was, I went back to set a going a younger pair of legs than mine. Without disturbing anybody, Samuel and I got a couple of guns, and went all round the house and through the shrubbery. Having made sure that no persons were lurking about anywhere in our gardens, we turned back. Passing over the walk where I had seen the shadow, I now noticed for the first time a little bright object lying on the clean gravel under the light of the moon. Seeing the object up, I discovered it was a small bottle, containing a thick, sweet-smelling liquor, as black as ink. I said nothing to Samuel, but remembering what Penelope had told me about the jugglers, and the pouring of the little pool of ink into the palm of the boy's hand, I instantly suspected that I had disturbed the three Indians lurking about the house and bent in their heathenish way on discovering the whereabouts of the diamond that night. CHAPTER VIII. Here for one moment I find it necessary to call a halt. On summoning up my own recollections, and on getting Penelope to help me by consulting her journal, I find that we may pass pretty rapidly over the interval between Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival and Ms. Rachel's birthday. For the greater part of that time the days passed and brought nothing with them worth recording. With your good leave, then, and with Penelope's help, I shall notice certain dates only in this place, reserving to myself to tell the story day by day once more as soon as we get to the time when the business of the Moonstone became the chief business of everybody in our house. This said we may now go on again, beginning, of course, with a bottle of sweet-smelling ink which I found on the gravel walk at night. On the next morning, the morning of the twenty-sixth, I showed Mr. Franklin this article of jugglery and told him what I have already told you. His opinion was not only that the Indians had been lurking about after the diamond, but also that they were actually foolish enough to believe in their own magic, meaning thereby the making of signs on a boy's head and the pouring of ink into a boy's hand, and then expecting him to see persons or things beyond the reach of human vision. In our country, as well as in the East, Mr. Franklin informed me, there are people who practice this curious hocus-pocus without the ink, however, and who call it by a French name, signifying something like brightness of sight. "'Depend on it,' says Mr. Franklin. The Indians took it for granted that we should keep the diamond here, and they brought their clairvoyant boy to show them the way to it, if they succeeded in getting into the house that night. "'Do you think they'll try again, sir?' I asked. "'It depends,' says Mr. Franklin, on what the boy can really do. "'If he can see the diamond through the iron safe of the bank at Fritzing Hall, we should be troubled with no more visits from the Indians for the present. "'If he can't, we shall have another chance of catching them in the shrubbery, before many nights are over our heads.' I waited pretty confidently for that latter chance, but strangely late it never came. Whether the jugglers heard in the town of Mr. Franklin having been seen at the bank and drew their conclusions accordingly, or whether the boy really did see the diamond where the diamond was now lodged, which I for one flatly disbelieve, or whether, after all, it was a mere effect of chance, this at any rate is the plain truth. Not the ghost of an Indian came near the house again through the weeks that passed before Mr. Rachel's birthday. The jugglers remained in and about the town, plying their trade, and Mr. Franklin and I remained waiting to see what might happen, and resolute not to put the rogues on their guard by showing our suspicions of them too soon. With this report of the proceedings on either side ends all I have to say about the Indians for the present. On the twenty-ninth of the month, Mr. Rachel and Mr. Franklin hit on a new method of working their way together through the time which might otherwise have hung heavy on their hands. There are reasons for taking particular notice here of the occupation that amused them. You will find it has a bearing on something that is still to come. Gentle folk, in general, have a very awkward rock ahead in life. The rock ahead of their own idleness. Their lives being, for the most part, passed in looking about them for something to do, it is curious to see, especially when their tastes are of what is called the intellectual sort, how often they drift blindfold into some nasty pursuit. Nine times out of ten they take to torturing something, or to spoiling something, and they firmly believe that they are improving their minds, when the plain truth is they are only making a mess in the house. I have seen them, ladies, I am sorry to say as well as gentlemen, go out day after day, for example, with empty pillboxes, and catch newts and beetles and spiders and frogs, and come home and stick pins through the miserable wretches, or cut them up without a pang of remorse into little pieces. You see my young master or my young mistress pouring over one of their spiders' insides with a magnifying glass, or you meet one of their frogs walking downstairs without its head, and when you have wondered what this cruel nastiness means, you are told it means a taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history. Sometimes again you see them occupied for hours together, in spoiling a pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosity, to know what a flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or it's scent any sweeter when you do know? But there, the poor souls must get through the time you see, they must get through the time. You dabbled in nasty mud and made pies when you were a child, and you dabbled in nasty science and dissect spiders and spoil flowers when you grow up. In the one case, and in the other, the secret of it is, that you have got nothing to think of in your poor empty head, and nothing to do with your poor idle hands. And so it ends in your spoiling canvas with paints, and making a smell in the house, or in keeping tadpoles in a glass box full of dirty water, and turning everybody's stomach in the house, or in chipping off bits of stone here, there, and everywhere, and dropping grit into the victuals in the house, or in staining your fingers in the pursuit of photography, and doing justice without mercy on everyone's face in the house. It often falls heavily enough, no doubt, on people who are really obliged to get their living, to be forced to work for the clothes that cover them, the roof that shelters them, and the food that keeps them going. But compare the hardest days work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spider's stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it must think of, and your hands something that they must do. As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they tortured nothing, I'm glad to say. They simply confined themselves to making a mess, and all they spoiled to do them justice was the panelling of a door. Mr. Franklin's universal genius, dabbling in everything, dabbled in what he called decorative painting. He had invented, he informed us, a new mixture to moisten paint with, which he described as a vehicle. What it was made of, I don't know. What it did, I can tell you in two words. It stank. Miss Rachel, being wild to try her hand at the new process, Mr. Franklin sent to London for the materials, mixed them up with the accompaniment of a smell which made the very dog's sneeze when they came into the room, put an apron and bib over Miss Rachel's gown, and set her to work, decorating her own little sitting-room, called for want of English to name it in, her boudoir. They began with the inside of the door. Mr. Franklin scraped off all the nice varnish with pumice stone, and made what he described as a surface to work on. Miss Rachel then covered the surface, under his directions and with his help, with patterns and devices, griffins, birds, flowers, cupids and such like, copied from designs made by a famous Italian painter whose name escapes me, the one I mean who stalked the world with Virgin Marys and had a sweetheart at the bakers. Viewed as work, this decoration was slow to do and dirty to deal with. But our young lady and gentlemen never seemed to tire of it. When they were not riding or seeing company or taking their meals or piping their songs, there they were with their heads together, as busy as bees, spoiling the door. Who was the poet who said that Satan find some mischief still for idle hands to do? If he had occupied my place in the family, and had seen Miss Rachel with her brush and Mr. Franklin with his vehicle, he could have written nothing truer of either of them than that. The next date worthy of notice is Sunday the fourth of June. On that evening we in the servants' hall debated a domestic question for the first time, which, like the decoration of the door, has its bearing on something that is still to come. Seeing the pleasure which Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel took in each other's society, and noting what a pretty match they were in all personal respects, we naturally speculated on the chance of their putting their heads together with other objects in view besides the ornamenting of a door. Some of us said that there would be a wedding in the house before the summer was over. Others, led by me, admitted that it was likely enough Miss Rachel might be married, but we doubted, for reasons which will presently appear, whether her bridegroom would be Mr. Franklin Blake. That Mr. Franklin was in love on his side, nobody who saw and heard him could doubt. The difficulty was to fathom Miss Rachel. Let me do myself the honour of making you acquainted with her, after which I will leave you to fathom for yourself, if you can. My young lady's eighteenth birthday was the birthday now coming, on the twenty-first of June. If you happen to like dark women, who I am informed have gone out of fashion latterly in the gay world, and if you have no particular prejudice in favour of size, I will answer for Miss Rachel as one of the prettiest girls your eyes ever looked on. She was small and slim, but all in fine proportion from top to toe. To see her sit down, to see her get up, and especially to see her walk, was enough to satisfy any man in his senses that the graces of her figure, if you'll pardon me the expression, were in her flesh and not in her clothes. Her hair was the blackest I ever saw. Her eyes matched her hair. Her nose was not quite large enough, I admit. Her mouth and chin were, to quote Mr. Franklin, morsels for the gods, and her complexion on the same undeniable authority was as warm as the sun itself, with this great advantage over the sun that it was always in nice order to look at. Add to the foregoing that she carried her head as upright as a dart in a dashing spirited thoroughbred way, that she had a clear voice, with a ring of the right metal in it, and a smile that began very prettily in her eyes before it got to her lips, and there behold the portrait of her to the best of my painting as large as life. What about her disposition next? Had this charming creature no faults? She had just as many faults as you have, ma'am, neither more nor less. To put it seriously, my dear, pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of graces and attractions had one defect which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age in this, that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set fashions themselves at defiance if the fashions didn't suit her views. In trifles this independence of hers was all well enough, but in matters of importance it carried her, as my lady thought, and as I thought, too far. She judged for herself, as few women of twice her age judge in general. Never asked your advice, never told you beforehand what she was going to do, never came with secrets and confidences to anybody from her mother downwards. In little things, and in great, with people she loved, and people she hated, and she did both with equal heartiness, Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own, sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life. Over and over again I have heard my lady say, Rachel's best friend and Rachel's worst enemy are, one and the other, Rachel herself. Add one thing more to this, and I have done. With all her secrecy and her self-will, there was not so much as the shadow of anything false in her. I never remember her breaking her word. I never remember her saying no and meaning yes. I can call to mind, in her childhood, more than one occasion when the good little soul took the blame and suffered the punishment, for some fault committed by a play-fellow whom she loved. Nobody ever knew her to confess to it when the thing was found out, and she was charged with it afterwards. But nobody ever knew her to lie about it, either. She looked you straight in the face, and shook her saucy little head, and said plainly, I won't tell you. Punished again for this, she would own to being very sorry for saying won't. But, bread and water notwithstanding, she never told you. Self-willed, devilish self-willed sometimes I grant, but the finest creature nevertheless that ever walked the ways of this lower world. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here. In that case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely for the next four and twenty hours. If your good lady doesn't exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, heaven help you, you have married a monster. I have now brought you acquainted with Miss Rachel, which you will find puts us face to face next with the question of that young lady's matrimonial views. On June 12 an invitation from my mistress was sent to a gentleman in London to come and help to keep Miss Rachel's birthday. This was the fortunate individual on whom I believed her heart to be privately set. Like Mr. Franklin, he was a cousin of hers. His name was Mr. Godfrey Abelwhite. My lady's second sister, don't be alarmed, we're not going very deep into family matters this time. My lady's second sister, I say, had a disappointment in love, and taking a husband afterwards on the neck-or-nothing principle made what they call a misalliance. There was terrible work in the family when the Honourable Caroline insisted on marrying plain Mr. Abelwhite, the banker of Fritzinghall. He was very rich and very respectable, and he begot a prodigious large family, all in his favour so far. But he had presumed to raise himself from a low station in the world, and that was against him. However, time and progress of modern enlightenment put things right, and the misalliance passed muster very well. We are all getting liberal now, and, provided you can scratch me if I scratch you, what do I care, in or out of Parliament, whether you are a dustman or a duke? That's the modern way of looking at it. And I keep up with the modern way. The Abelwhites lived in a fine house and grounds, a little out of Fritzinghall, very worthy people, and greatly respected in the neighbourhood. We shall not be much troubled with them in these pages, excepting Mr. Godfrey, who was Mr. Abelwhite's second son, and who must take his proper place here, if you please, for Miss Rachel's sake. With all his brightness and cleverness and general good qualities, Mr. Franklin's chance of topping Mr. Godfrey in our young lady's estimation was, in my opinion, a very poor chance indeed. In the first place, Mr. Godfrey was, in point of size, the finest man by far of the two. He stood over six feet high, he had a beautiful red and white colour, a smooth round face shaved as bare as your hand, and a head of lovely long flaxen hair, falling negligently over the pole of his neck. But why do I try to give you this personal description of him? If you ever subscribe to a lady's charity in London, you know Mr. Godfrey Abelwhite, as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession, a lady's man by temperament, and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and female destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for confining poor women, Magdalene societies for rescuing poor women, strong-minded societies for putting more women into poor men's places and leaving the men to shift to themselves. He was Vice President, Manager, Referee to them all. Wherever there was a table with a committee of ladies sitting round it in council, there was Mr. Godfrey at the bottom of the board, keeping the temper of the committee, and leading the dear creatures along the thorny ways of business hat in hand. I do suppose this was the most accomplished philanthropist, on a small independence, that England ever produced. As a speaker at charitable meetings, the like of him for drawing your tears and your money was not easy to find. He was quite a public character. The last time I was in London, my mistress gave me two treats. She sent me to the theatre to see a dancing woman who was all the rage, and she sent me to exit a hall to hear Mr. Godfrey. The lady did it with a band of music. The gentleman did it with a handkerchief and a glass of water. Crowds at the performance with the legs, ditto at the performance with the tongue. And with all this, the sweetest tempered person, if I allude to Mr. Godfrey, the simplest and pleasantest and easiest pleas you ever met with. He loved everybody, and everybody loved him. What chance had Mr. Franklin, what chance had anybody of average reputation and capacities against such a man as this? On the fourteenth came Mr. Godfrey's answer. He accepted my mistress's invitation from the Wednesday of the birthday to the evening Friday, when his duties to the ladies' charities would oblige him to return to town. He also enclosed a copy of verses on what he elegantly called his cousin's natal day. Miss Rachel, I was informed, joined Mr. Franklin in making fun of the verses at dinner, and Penelope, who was all on Mr. Franklin's side, asked me in great triumph what I thought of that. Miss Rachel has led you off on a full scent, my dear, I replied, but my nose is not so easily mystified. Wait till Mr. Abelwhite's verses are followed by Mr. Abelwhite himself. My daughter replied that Mr. Franklin might strike in and try his luck before the verses were followed by the poet. In favour of this view, I must acknowledge that Mr. Franklin left no chance untried of winning Miss Rachel's good graces. Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with, he gave up his cigar because she said, one day, that she hated the stale smell of it in his clothes. He slept so badly after this effort of self-denial for want of the composing effect of the tobacco to which he was used, and came down, morning after morning, looking so haggard and worn, that Miss Rachel herself begged him to take to his cigars again. No, he would take to nothing again that could cause her a moment's annoyance. He would fight it out resolutely and get back his sleep sooner or later by main force of patience in waiting for it. Such devotion of this, you may say, as some of them said downstairs, could never fail of producing the right effect on Miss Rachel. Backed up, too, as it was, by the decorating work every day on the door. All very well, but she had a photograph of Mr. Godfrey in her bedroom, represented speaking at a public meeting, with all his hair blown out by the breath of his own eloquence, and his eyes, most lovely, charming the money out of your pockets. What do you say to that? Every morning, as Penelope herself owned to me, there was the man whom the women couldn't do without, looking on, in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair combed. He would be looking on in reality before long. That was my opinion of it. June the 16th brought an event which made Mr. Franklin's chance look, to my mind, a worse chance than ever. A strange gentleman, speaking English with a foreign accent, came that morning to the house, and asked to see Mr. Franklin Blake on business. The business could not possibly have been connected with the diamond, for these two reasons. First, that Mr. Franklin told me nothing about it. Secondly, that he communicated it, when the gentleman had gone, as I suppose, to my lady. She probably hinted something about it next to her daughter. At any rate, Miss Rachel was reported to have said some severe things to Mr. Franklin at the piano that evening, about the people that he had lived among, and the principles he had adopted in foreign parts. The next day, for the first time, nothing was done towards the decoration of the door. I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin's on the continent, with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it, had followed him to England. But that is all guesswork. In this case, not only Mr. Franklin, but my lady, too, for a wonder, left me in the dark. On the 17th, to all appearance, the cloud passed away again. They returned to their decorating work on the door, and seemed to be as good friends as ever. If Penelope was to be believed, Mr. Franklin had seized the opportunity of the reconciliation, to make an offer to Miss Rachel, and had neither been accepted nor refused. My girl was sure, from signs and tokens which I did not trouble you with, that her young mistress had fought Mr. Franklin off by declining to believe that he was an earnest, and had then secretly regretted treating him that way afterwards. Though Penelope was admitted to more familiarity with her young mistress than maids generally are, for the two had been almost brought up together as children, still I knew Miss Rachel's reserved character too well, to believe that she would show her mind to anybody in this way. What my daughter told me on the present occasion was, as I suspected, more what she wished than what she really knew. On the 19th another event happened. We had the doctor in the house, professionally. He was summoned to prescribe for a person whom I have had the occasion to present to you in these pages, our second housemaid, Roseanna Spearman. The poor girl, who had puzzled me, as you know already, at the shivering sand, puzzled me more than once again in the interval of time of which I am now writing. Penelope's notion that her fellow servant was in love with Mr. Franklin, which my daughter, by my orders, kept strictly secret, seemed to be just as absurd as ever. But I must own that what I myself saw, and what my daughter saw also, of our second housemaid's conduct, began to look mysterious, to say the least of it. For example, the girl constantly put herself in Mr. Franklin's way, very slyly and quietly, but she did it. He took about as much notice of her as he took of the cat. It never seemed to occur to him to waste a look on Roseanna's plain face. The poor thing's appetite, never much, fell away dreadfully, and her eyes in the morning showed plain signs of waking and crying at night. One day Penelope made an awkward discovery which we hushed up on the spot. She caught Roseanna at Mr. Franklin's dressing table, secretly removing a rose, which Miss Rachel had given him to wear in his buttonhole, and putting another rose like it, of her own picking, in its place. She was, after that, once or twice impudent to me, when I gave her a well-meant general hint to be careful in her conduct, and, worse still, she was not over-respectful now on the few occasions when Miss Rachel accidentally spoke to her. My lady noticed the change, and asked me what I thought about it. I tried to screen the girl by answering that I thought she was out of health, and it ended in the doctor being sent for, as already mentioned, on the nineteenth. He said it was her nerves, and doubted if she was fit for service. My lady offered to remove her for a change of air to one of our farms in land. She begged and prayed with the tears in her eyes to be let stop, and, in an evil hour, I advised my lady to try her for a little longer. As the event proved, and as you will soon see, this was the worst advice I could have given. If I could only have looked a little way into the future, I would have taken Rosanna Spearman out of the house, then and there, with my own hand. On the twentieth there came a note from Mr. Godfrey. He had arranged to stop at Fritzing Hall that night, having occasioned to consult his father on business. On the afternoon of the next day he and his two eldest sisters would ride over to us on horseback in good time before dinner. An elegant little casket in China accompanied the note, presented to Miss Rachel with her cousin's love and best wishes. Mr. Franklin had only given her a plain locket not worth half the money. My daughter Penelope, nevertheless, such is the obstinacy of women, still backed him to win. Thanks be to heaven we have arrived at the eve of the birthday at last. You will own, I think, that I have got you over the ground this time without much loitering, by the way. Cheer up! I'll ease you with a new chapter here, and, what is more, that chapter shall take you straight into the thick of the story. CHAPTER IX June 21st, the day of the birthday, was cloudy and unsettled at sunrise, but towards noon it cleared up bravely. We, in the servants' hall, began this happy anniversary as usual, by offering our little presence to Miss Rachel, with the regular speech delivered annually by me as chief. I follow the plan adopted by the Queen in opening Parliament. Namely, the plan of saying much the same thing regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech, like the Queen's, is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out to be not the novelty that was anticipated, although they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the kitchen. That's the model of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on the subject of the Moonstone, the time having now come for removing it from the bank and fritzing hall, and placing it in Miss Rachel's own hands. Whether he had been trying to make love to his cousin again, and had got a rebuff, or whether his broken rest, night after night, was aggravating the queer contradictions and uncertainties in his character, I don't know. But certain it is that Mr. Franklin failed to show himself at his best on the morning of the birthday. He was in twenty different minds about the diamond in as many minutes. For my part, I stuck fast by the plain facts as we knew them. Nothing had happened to justify us in alarming my lady on the subject of the jewel, and nothing could alter the legal obligation that now lay on Mr. Franklin to put it into his cousin's possession. That was my view of the matter, and twist and turn it as he might. He was forced in the end to make it his view, too. We arranged that he was to ride over after lunch to Fritzing Hall, and bring the diamond back with Mr. Godfrey and the two young ladies in all probability to keep him company on the way home again. This settled. Our young gentleman went back to Miss Rachel. They consumed the whole morning and part of the afternoon in the everlasting business of decorating the door. Penelope, standing by to mix the colours as directed, and my lady, as lunch and time drew near, going in and out of the room with her handkerchief to her nose, for they used a deal of Mr. Franklin's vehicle that day, and trying vainly to get the two artists away from their work. It was three o'clock before they took off their aprons, and released Penelope, much the worth for the vehicle, and cleaned themselves of their mess. But they had done what they wanted. They had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on were, I must own, most beautiful to behold, though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit towards the vehicle. No, no. It left off stinking when it dried, and if art requires these sort of sacrifices, though the girl is my own daughter, I say let art have them. Mr. Franklin snatched a morsel from the luncheon table, and rode off to Fritzing Hall, to escort his cousins, as he told my lady, to fetch the Moonstone, as a privately known, to himself and to me. This being one of the high festivals on which I took my place at the sideboard, in command of the intendants at the table, I had plenty to occupy my mind, while Mr. Franklin was away. Having seen to the wine, and reviewed my men and women who were to wait at dinner, I retired to collect myself before the company came. A whiff of, you know what, and a turn at a certain book which I have had occasion to mention here in these pages, composed me body and mind. I was aroused from what I am inclined to think must have been not a nap, but a reverie, by the clatter of horses hooves outside, and, going to the door, received a cavalcade comprising Mr. Franklin and his three cousins, escorted by one of old Mr. Abelwhite's grooms. Mr. Godfrey struck me, strangely enough, as being like Mr. Franklin in this respect, that he did not seem to be in his customary spirits. He kindly shook hands with me, as usual, and was most politely glad to see his old friend Betteridge wearing so well. But there was a sort of cloud over him, which I couldn't at all account for, and when I asked how he had found his father in health, he answered rather shortly, much as usual. However, the two Miss Abelwhites were cheerful enough for twenty, which more than restored the balance. They were nearly as big as their brother, spanking yellow-haired rosy lasses overflowing with super-abundant flesh and blood bursting from head to foot with health and spirits. The legs of the poor horses trembled with caring them, and when they jumped from their saddles, without waiting to be helped, I declared they bounced on the ground as if they were made of India rubber. Everything the Miss Abelwhite said began with a large O. Everything they did was done with a bang, and they giggled and screamed in season and out of season on the smallest provocation. Bounces, that's what I call them. Under cover of the noise made by the young ladies, I had an opportunity of saying a private word to Mr. Franklin in the hall. Have you got the diamond safe, sir? He nodded and tapped the breast-pocket of his coat. Have you seen anything of the Indians? Not at Limp's. With that answer he asked for my lady, and hearing she was in the small drawing-room, went there straight away. The bell rang before he had been a minute in the room, and Penelope was sent to tell Miss Rachel that Mr. Franklin Blake wanted to speak to her. Crossing the hall about half an hour afterwards, I was brought to a sudden standstill by an outbreak of screams from the small drawing-room. I can't say I was at all alarmed, for I recognized the screams as the favourite large O. of the Miss Abelwhites. However I went in, on pretence of asking for instructions about the dinner, to discover whether anything serious had really happened. There stood Miss Rachel at the table, like a person fascinated, with the Colonel's unlucky diamond in her hand. There, on either side of her, knelt the two bounces, devouring the jewel with their eyes, and screaming with ecstasy every time it flashed on them in a new light. There, at the opposite end of the table, stood Mr. Godfrey, clapping his hands like a large child, and singing out softly, exquisite, exquisite! There sat Mr. Franklin in a chair by the bookcase, tugging at his beard, and looking anxiously towards the window. And there, at the window, stood the object that he was contemplating, my lady having the extract from the Colonel's will in her hand, and keeping her back turned on the whole of the company. She faced me when I asked for my instructions, and I saw the family frown gathering over her eyes, and the family temper twitching at the corners of her mouth. Come to my room in half an hour, she answered. I shall have something to say to you then. With those words she went out. It was plain enough that she was posed by the same difficulty which had posed Mr. Franklin and me in our conference at the shivering sand. Was the legacy of the Moonstone a proof that she had treated her brother with cruel injustice? Or was it proof that he was worse than the worst she had ever thought of him? Serious questions, though, for my lady to determine, while her daughter, innocent of all knowledge of the Colonel's character, stood there with the Colonel's birthday gift in her hand. Before I could leave the room in my turn, Miss Rachel, always considerate to the old servant who had been in the house when she was born, stopped me. Look, Gabriel, she said, and flashed the jewel before my eyes in a ray of sunlight that poured through the window. Lord blesses, it was a diamond, as large or nearly as a plover's egg. The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It seemed unfathomable, this jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb. Seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves. We set it in the sun, then shut the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness with a moony gleam in the dark. No wonder Miss Rachel was fascinated. No wonder her cousin screamed. The diamond laid such a hold of me that I burst out with as large an O as the bouncers themselves. The only one of us who kept his senses was Mr. Godfrey. He put an arm round each of his sister's wastes, and, looking compassionately backwards and forwards between the diamond and me, said, Carbon Betteridge, mere Carbon, my good friend, after all. His object, I suppose, was to instruct me. All he did, however, was to remind me of the dinner. I hobbled off to my army of waiters downstairs. As I went out, Mr. Godfrey said, Dear old Betteridge, I have the truest regard for him. He was embracing his sisters, and ogling Miss Rachel, while he honoured me with that testimony of affection. Something like a stock of love to draw on there. Mr. Franklin was a perfect savage by comparison with him. At the end of half an hour I presented myself as directed in my lady's room. What passed between my mistress and me on this occasion was, in the main, a repetition of what had passed between Mr. Franklin and me at the shivering sand, with this difference, that I took care to keep my own counsel about the jugglers, seeing that nothing had happened to justify me in alarming my lady on this head. When I received my dismissal, I could see that she took the blackest view possible of the Colonel's motives, and that she was bent on getting the moonstone out of her daughter's possession at the first opportunity. On my way back to my own part of the house, I was encountered by Mr. Franklin. He wanted to know if I had seen anything of his cousin Rachel. I had seen nothing of her. Could I tell him where his cousin Godfrey was? I didn't know, but I began to suspect that cousin Godfrey might not be far away from cousin Rachel. Mr. Franklin's suspicions apparently took the same turn. He tugged it hard at his beard, and went and shut himself up in the library with a bang of the door that had a world of meaning in it. I was interrupted no more in the business of preparing for the birthday dinner, till it was time for me to spartan myself up for receiving the company. Just as I had got my white waistcoat on, Penelope presented herself at my toilet, on pretence of brushing what little hair I've got left, and improving the tie of my white provat. My girl was in high spirits, and I saw that she had something to say to me. She gave me a kiss on the top of my bald head, and whispered, News for you, Father. Miss Rachel had refused him. Who's him? I asked. The Lady's committeeman, Father, says Penelope. A nasty sly fellow. I hate him for trying to supplant Mr. Franklin. If I had had breath enough, I should certainly have protested against this indecent way of speaking of an eminent philanthropic character. But my daughter happened to be improving the tie of my provat at that moment, and the whole strength of her feelings found its way into her fingers. I was never more nearly strangled in my whole life. I saw him take her away alone into the rose garden, says Penelope. And I waited behind the holly to see how they came back. They had gone out, arm in arm, both laughing. They came back, walking separate, as grave as grave could be, and looking straight away from each other, in a manner with which there was no mistaking. I was never more delighted, Father, in my life. There's one woman in the world who can resist Mr. Godfrey Abelwhite at any rate, and if I was a Lady, I should be another. Here I should have protested again, but my daughter had got the hairbrush by this time, and the whole strength of her feelings had passed into that. If you are bald, you will understand how she sacrificed me. If you are not, skip this bit, and thank God you have got something in the way of defence between your hairbrush and your head. Just on the other side of the holly, Penelope went on, Mr. Godfrey came to a standstill. You prefer, says he, that I should stop here as if nothing had happened. Miss Rachel turned on him like lightning. You have accepted my mother's invitation, she said, and you are here to meet her guests. Unless you wish to make a scandal in the house, you will remain, of course. She went on a few steps, and then seemed to relent a little. Let us forget what has passed, Godfrey, she said, and let us remain cousins still. She gave him her hand. He kissed it, which I should have considered taking a liberty. And then she left him. He waited a little by himself with his head down, and his heel grinding a hole slowly in the gravel walk. You never saw a man look more put out in your life. Awkward, he said, between his teeth, when he looked up, and went on into the house. Very awkward. If that was his opinion of himself, he was quite right. Awkward enough, I am sure. At the end of it is, Father, what I told you all along, cried Penelope, finishing me off with the last scarification, the hottest of all. Mr. Franklin's the man. I got possession of the hairbrush, and opened my lips to administer the reproof, which, you will own, my daughter's language and conduct richly deserved. Before I could say a word, the crash of carriage-wheels outside struck in, and stopped me. The first of the dinner-party had come. Penelope instantly ran off. I put on my coat, and looked in the glass. My head was as red as a lobster, but, in other respects, I was nicely dressed for the ceremonies of the evening as a man need be. I got into the hall, just in time to announce the two first of the guests. You didn't feel particularly interested about them. Only the philanthropist's father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Abelwhite. The Moonstone. By Wilkie Collins. Read by Leanne Howlett. Chapter 10 One on the top of the other, the rest of the company, followed the Abelwhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see when they were settled in their places round the dinner table, and the rector of frizzing hall, with beautiful elocution, rose and said grace. There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meet none of them a second time, in my part of the story at any rate, with the exception of two. Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day, was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion she was more particularly the center point towards which everybody's eyes were directed. Four, to my lady's secret annoyance, she wore her wonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest, the Moonstone. It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands, but that universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived, with the help of his neat fingers and a little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch in the bosom of her white dress. Everybody wondered at the prodigious size and beauty of the diamond, as a matter of course. But the only two of the company who said anything out of the common way about it were those two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand and her left. The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizzing Hall. This was a pleasant, commandable little man, with the drawback, however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of his joke and of his plunging in, rather a headlong manner, and to talk with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society, he was constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by the ears together. In his medical practice, he was a more prudent man, picking up his discretion, as his enemies said, by a kind of instinct, and proving to be generally right, where more carefully conducted doctors turned out to be wrong. What he said about the diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her, in the interest of science, to let him take it home and burn it. We will first heat it, Miss Rachel, says the doctor, to such and such a degree, then we will expose it to a current of air, and little by little, puff. We evaporate the diamond, and spare you a world of anxiety about the safekeeping of a valuable precious stone. My lady, listening with rather a care-worn expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel Zellis enough in the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift. The other guest, who sat on my young lady's right hand, was an imminent public character, being no other than the celebrated Indian traveler, Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated into skies where no European had ever set foot before. This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look, and a very steady attempt of eye. It was rumored that he was tired of the humdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go back and wander off on the tramp again and the wild places of the east. Except what he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke six words or drank so much as a single glass of wine all through the dinner. The moonstone was the only object that interested him in the smallest degree. The fame of it seemed to have reached him in some of those perilous Indian places where his wanderings had lain. After looking at it silently for so long a time that Miss Rachel began to get confused, he said to her in his cool, immovable way, If you ever go to India, Miss Farinder, don't take your uncle's birthday gift with you. A Hindu diamond is sometimes part of a Hindu religion. I know a certain city and a certain temple in that city where, dressed as you are now, your life would not be worth five minutes' purchase. Miss Rachel, safe in England, was quite delighted to hear of her danger in India. The bouncers were more delighted still. They dropped their knives and forked with a crash and burst out together vehemently. Oh, how interesting! My lady fidgeted in her chair and changed the subject. As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little, that this festival was not prospering as other like festivals had prospered before it. Looking back at the birthday now by the light of what happened afterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed diamond must have cast a blight on the whole company. I applied them well with wine and, being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes round the table and whispered to the company confidentially, please to change your mind and try it, for I know it will do you good. Nine times out of ten they changed their minds out of regard for their old original betterage they were pleased to say, but all to no purpose. There were gaps of silence in the talk as the dinner got on that made me feel personally uncomfortable. When they did use their tongues again they used them innocently in the most unfortunate manner and to the worst possible purpose. Mr. Candy, the doctor, for instance, said more unlucky things than I ever knew him to say before. Take one sample of the way in which he went on and you will understand what I had to put up with at the sideboard, officiating as I was and the character of a man who had the prosperity of the festival at heart. One of our lady's president dinner was worthy Mrs. Threadgall, widow of the late professor of that name. Talking of her deceased husband perpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers that he was deceased. She thought, I suppose, that every able-bodied adult in England ought to know as much as that. In one of the gaps of silence somebody mentioned the dry and rather nasty subject of human anatomy, whereupon good Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her late husband as usual without mentioning that he was dead. Anatomy she described is the professor's favorite recreation in his leisure hours. As ill luck would have it, Mr. Candy, sitting opposite, who knew nothing of the deceased gentleman, heard her. Being the most polite of men, he seized the opportunity of assisting the professor's anatomical amusements on the spot. They've got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College of Surgeons, says Mr. Candy, across the table in a loud, cheerful voice. I strongly recommend the professor, ma'am, when he next has an hour to spare to pay them a visit. You might have heard a pinfall. The company, out of respect to the professor's memory, all sat speechless. I was behind Mrs. Threadgall at the time, plying her confidentially with a glass of hawk. She dropped her head and said in a very low voice. My beloved husband is no more. Unluckily Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting the truth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever. The professor may not be aware, says he, that the card of a member of the College will admit him on any day but Sunday between the hours of ten and four. Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker and in a lower voice still repeated the solemn words. My beloved husband is no more. I winked hard at Mr. Candy across the table. Ms. Rachel touched his arm. My lady looked unutterable things at him. Quite useless. On he went, with the cordiality, that there was no stopping anyhow. I shall be delighted, says he, to send the professor my card if you will oblige me by mentioning his present address. His present address, sir, is the grave, says Mrs. Threadgall, suddenly losing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury that made the glasses ring again. The professor has been dead these ten years. Oh, good heavens, says Mr. Candy. Accepting the bouncers who burst out laughing, such a blank now fell on the company, that they might all have been going the way of the professor, inhaling as he did from the direction of the grave. So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them were nearly as provoking in their different ways as the doctor himself. When they ought to have spoken they didn't speak, or when they did speak they were perpetually at cross purposes. Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent in public, declined to exert himself in private. Whether he was sulky or whether he was bashful, after his discomforture in the rose garden, I can't say. He kept all his talk for the private ear of the lady, a member of our family, who sat next to him. She was one of his committee women, a spiritually minded person, with a fine show of collarbone and a pretty taste in champagne, liked it dry, you understand, and plenty of it. Being close behind these two at the sideboard, I can testify from what I heard pass between them that the company lost a good deal of very improving conversation, which I caught up while drawing the corks and carving the mutton and so forth. What they said about their charities I didn't hear. When I had time to listen to them, they had got a long way beyond their women to be confined and their women to be rescued, and were disputing on serious subjects. Religion, I understand Mr. Godfrey to say, between the corks and the carving, meant love. And love meant religion. And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new. Earth had some very objectionable people in it. But, to make amends for that, all the women in heaven would be members of a prodigious committee that never quarreled with all the men in attendance on them as ministering angels. Beautiful, beautiful. But why the mischief did Mr. Godfrey keep it all to his lady and himself? Mr. Franklin again, surely you will say Mr. Franklin stirred the company up into making a pleasant evening of it. Nothing of the sort. He had quite recovered himself, and he was in wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect, of Mr. Godfrey's reception in the Rose Garden. But talk as he might, nine times out of ten, he pitched on the wrong subject or he addressed himself to the wrong person. The end of it being that he offended some and puzzled all of them. That foreign training of his, those French and German and Italian sides of him, to which I've already alluded, came out at my lady's hospital board in a most bewildering manner. What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the links to which a married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not her husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to the maiden aunt of the vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he shifted to the German side of his telling the Lord of the Manor, while that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in the breeding of bulls, that experience properly understood counter for nothing, and that the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep into your own mind, evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and produce them? What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheese and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out as follows? If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left? What do you say to Mr. Franklin answering from the Italian point of view? We've got three things left, sir. Love, music, and salad. He not only terrified the company with such outbreaks as these, but when the English side of him turned up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness and, getting on the subject of the medical profession, said such downright things and ridicule of doctors that he actually put good-humored little Mr. Candy in a rage. The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led, I forget how, to acknowledge that he had laterally slept very badly at night. Mr. Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order, and that he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin replied that a course of medicine and a course of groping in the dark meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting back smartly, said that Mr. Franklin himself was, constitutionally speaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but medicine could help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on his side, said he had often heard of the blind leading the blind, and now for the first time he knew what it meant. In this way they kept it going briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them got hot. Mr. Candy in particular, so completely losing his self-control and defense of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere and forbid the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the last extinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk spurred it up again here and there for a minute or two at a time, but there was a miserable lack of life and sparkle in it. The devil, or the diamond, possessed that dinner party, and it was a relief to everybody when my mistress rose and gave the ladies a signal to leave the gentleman over their wine. I had just arranged the decanters in a row before old Mr. Abel White, who represented the master of the house, when there came a sound from the terrace which startled me out of my company manners on the instant. Mr. Franklin and I looked at each other. It was the sound of the Indian drum. As I lived by bread, here were the jugglers returning to us with the return of the moonstone to the house. As they rounded the corner of the terrace and came in sight, I hobbled out to warn them off. But as ill luck would have it, the two bouncers were beforehand with me. They whizzed out onto the terrace like a couple of skyrockets, wild to see the Indians exhibit their tricks. The other ladies followed. The gentleman came out on their side. Before you could say, Lord bless us, the rogues were making their salams, and the bouncers were kissing the pretty little boy. Mr. Franklin got on one side of Miss Rachel, and I put myself behind her. If our suspicions were right, there she stood, innocent of all knowledge of the truth, showing the Indians the diamond and the bosom of her dress. I can't tell you what tricks they performed or how they did it. What would the vexation about the dinner, and what would the provocation of the rogues coming back just in the nick of time to see the jewel with their own eyes, I own I lost my head. The first thing that I remember noticing was a sudden appearance on the scene of the Indian traveler, Mr. Murthwaite. Skirting the half-circle in which the gentle folks stood or sat, he came quietly behind the jugglers and spoke to them on a sudden in the language of their own country. If he had pricked them with a bayonet, I doubt if the Indians could have started and turned on him with a more tigerish quickness than they did on hearing the first words that passed his lips. The next moment they were bowing and saloming to him in their most polite and snaky way. After a few words in the unknown tongue had passed on either side, Mr. Murthwaite withdrew as quietly as he had approached. The chief Indian, who acted as interpreter, thereupon wheeled about again towards the gentle folks. I noticed that the fellow's coffee-colored face had turned gray since Mr. Murthwaite had spoken to him. He bowed to my lady and informed her that the exhibition was over. The bouncers, indescribably disappointed, burst out with a loud, oh, directed against Mr. Murthwaite for stopping the performance. The chief Indian laid his hand humbly on his breast and said a second time that the juggling was over. The little boy went round with the hat. The ladies withdrew to the drawing room, and the gentleman, accepting Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite, returned to their wine. I and the footmen followed the Indians and saw them safe off the premises. Going back by way of the shrubbery, I smelt tobacco and found Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite, the latter smoking a charoute, walking slowly up and down among the trees. Mr. Franklin beckoned me to join them. This, says Mr. Franklin, presenting me to the great traveler, is Gabriel Bederidge, the old servant and friend of our family, of whom I spoke to you just now. Tell him, if you please, what you have just told me. Mr. Murthwaite took his charoute out of his mouth and leaned in his weary way against the trunk of a tree. Mr. Bederidge, he began, those three Indians are no more jugglers than you and I are. Here was a new surprise. I naturally asked the traveler if he had ever met with the Indians before. Never, says Mr. Murthwaite, but I know what Indian juggling really is. All you have seen tonight is a very bad and clumsy imitation of it. Unless, after long experience, I am utterly mistaken, those men are high-caste brahmins. I charged them with being disguised and you saw how it told on them, clever as the Hindu people are in concealing their feelings. There is a mystery about their conduct that I can't explain. They have doubly sacrificed their caste, first in crossing the sea, secondly in disguising themselves as jugglers. In the land they live in, that is a tremendous sacrifice to make. There must be some very serious motive at the bottom of it and some justification of no ordinary kind to plead for them in recovery of their caste when they return to their own country. I was struck dumb. Mr. Murthwaite went on with his charoute. Mr. Franklin, after what looked to me like a little private veering about between the different sides of his character, broke the silence as follows. I feel some hesitation, Mr. Murthwaite, in troubling you with family matters, in which you can have no interest and which I am not very willing to speak of out of our own circle. But after what you have said, I feel bound in the interest of Lady Verinder and her daughter to tell you something which may possibly put the clue into your hands. I speak to you in confidence. You will oblige me, I am sure, by not forgetting that. With this preface he told the Indian traveler all that he had told me at the shivering sand. Even the immovable Mr. Murthwaite was so interested in what he heard that he let his charoute go out. Now, says Mr. Franklin, when he had done, what does your experience say? My experience, answered the traveler, says that you have had more narrow escapes of your life, Mr. Franklin Blake, than I have had of mine, and that is saying a great deal. It was Mr. Franklin's turn to be astonished now. Is it really as serious as that? he asked. In my opinion it is, answered Mr. Murthwaite. I can't doubt, after what you have told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone to its place on the forehead of the Indian idol is the motive and the justification of that sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now. Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats and will use it with the ferocity of tigers. How you have escaped them I can't imagine, says the imminent traveler, lighting his charoute again and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. You have been carrying the diamond backwards and forwards here and in London and you are still a living man. Let us try and account for it. It was daylight both times, I suppose, when you took the jewel out of the bank in London. Broad daylight, says Mr. Franklin, and plenty of people in the streets. Plenty. You settled, of course, to arrive at Lady Verrinder's house at a certain time. It's a lonely country between this and the station. Did you keep your appointment? No. I arrived four hours earlier than my appointment. I beg to congratulate you on that proceeding. When did you take the diamond to the bank of the town here? I took it an hour after I had brought it to this house and three hours before anybody was prepared for seeing me in these parts. I beg to congratulate you again. Did you bring it back here alone? No. I happened to ride back with my cousins in the groom. I beg to congratulate you for the third time. If you ever feel inclined to travel beyond the civilized limits, Mr. Blake, let me know and I will go with you. You are a lucky man. Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn't at all square with my English ideas. You don't really mean to say, sir, I ask that they would have taken Mr. Franklin's life to get their diamond if he had given them the chance. Do you smoke, Mr. Betteridge, says the traveler? Yes, sir. Do you care much for the ashes left in your pipe when you empty it? No, sir. In the country those men came from, they cared just as much about killing a man as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe. If a thousand lives stood between them and the getting back of their diamond and if they thought they could destroy those lives without discovery, they would take them all. The sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India, if you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all. I expressed my opinion upon this that they were a set of murdering thieves. Mr. Murthwaite expressed his opinion that they were a wonderful people. Mr. Franklin, expressing no opinion at all, brought us back to the matter in hand. They have seen the moonstone of Miss Verinder's dress, he said. What is to be done? Which her uncle threatened to do, answered Mr. Murthwaite. Colonel Herne Castle understood the people he had to deal with. Send the diamond tomorrow under guard of more than one man to be cut up at Amsterdam. Make half a dozen diamonds of it instead of one. There is an end of its sacred identity as the moonstone and there is an end to the conspiracy. Mr. Franklin turned to me. There is no help for it, he said. We must speak to Lady Verinder tomorrow. What about tonight, sir? I asked. Suppose the Indians come back. Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak. The Indians won't risk coming back tonight, he said. The direct way is hardly ever the way they take to anything, let alone a matter like this in which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reaching their end. But suppose the rogues are bolder than you think, sir, I persisted. In that case, says Mr. Murthwaite, let the dogs loose. Have you got any big dogs in the yard? Two, sir. A mastiff and a bloodhound. They will do. In the present emergency, Mr. Betteridge, the mastiff and the bloodhound have one great merit. They are not likely to be troubled with your scruples about the sanctity of human life. The strumming of the piano reached us from the drawing room as he fired that shot at me. He threw away his charoute and took Mr. Franklin's arm to go back to the ladies. I noticed that the sky was clouding over fast as I followed them to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. He looked round at me in his dry droning way and said, The Indians will want their umbrellas, Mr. Betteridge, tonight. It was all very well for him to joke, but I was not an eminent traveler and my way in this world had not led me into playing ducks and drakes with my own life among thieves and murderers in the outlandish places of the earth. I went into my own little room and sat down in my chair and a perspiration and wondered helplessly what was to be done next. In the sanctions frame of mind, other men might have ended by working themselves up into a fever. I ended in a different way. I lit my pipe and took a turn at Robinson Crusoe. Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit, page 161 as follows. Fear of danger is 10,000 times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes, and we find the burden of anxiety greater by much than the evil which we are anxious about. The man who doesn't believe in Robinson Crusoe after that is a man with a screw loose in his understanding or a man lost in the midst of his own self-conceit. Argument is thrown away upon him, and pity is better reserved for some person with a livelier faith. I was far on with my second pipe and still lost in admiration of that wonderful book when Penelope, who had been handing round the tea, came in with her report from the drawing room. She had left the bouncer singing a duet, words beginning with a large O and music to correspond. She had observed that my lady made mistakes in her game of wist for the first time in our experience of her. She had seen the great traveler asleep in a corner. She had overheard Mr. Franklin sharpening his wits on Mr. Godfrey at the expense of ladies' charities in general, and she had noticed that Mr. Godfrey hit him back again rather more smartly than became a gentleman of his benevolent character. She had detected Miss Rachel, apparently engaged in appeasing Mrs. Threadgall by showing her some photographs and really occupied in stealing looks at Mr. Franklin, which no intelligent ladies made could misinterpret for a single instant. Finally, she had missed Mr. Candy, the doctor, who had mysteriously disappeared from the drawing room and had then mysteriously returned and entered into conversation with Mr. Godfrey. Upon the whole, things were prospering better than the experience of the dinner gave us any right to expect. If we could only hold on for another hour, old father time would bring up their carriages and relieve us of them altogether. Everything wears off in this world, and even the comforting effect of Robinson Crusoe wore off after Penelope left me. I got fidgety again and resolved on making a survey of the grounds before the rain came. Instead of taking the footman, whose nose was human, and therefore useless in any emergency, I took the bloodhound with me. His nose, for a stranger, was to be depended on. We went all round the premises and out into the road and returned as wise as we went, having discovered no such thing as a working human creature anywhere. The arrival of the carriages was the signal for the arrival of the rain. It ported as if it meant to pour all night. With the exception of the doctor, whose gig was waiting for him, the rest of the company went home snugly under cover and closed carriages. I told Mr. Candy that I was afraid he would get wet through. He told me in return that he wondered I had arrived at my time of life without knowing that a doctor's skin was waterproof. So he drove away in the rain, laughing over his own little joke, and so we got rid of our dinner company. The next thing to tell is the story of the night.