child of my sister, Julia Verinder, widow—if
her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be
living on the said Rachel Verinder's next Birthday
after my death—the yellow Diamond
belonging to me, and known in the East by the
name of The Moonstone: subject to this
condition, that her mother, the said Julia Verinder,
shall be living at the time. And I hereby desire
my executor to give my Diamond, either by his
own hands or by the hands of some trustworthy
representative whom he shall appoint, into the
personal possession of my said niece Rachel, on
her next birthday after my death, and in the
presence, if possible, of my sister, the said Julia
Verinder. And I desire that my said sister
may be informed, by means of a true copy of
this, the third and last clause of my Will, that
I give the Diamond to her daughter Rachel, in
token of my free forgiveness of the injury which
her conduct towards me has been the means of
inflicting on my reputation in my lifetime; and
especially in proof that I pardon, as becomes a
dying man, the insult offered to me as an officer
and a gentleman, when her servant, by her
orders, closed the door of her house against me,
on the occasion of her daughter's birthday."

More words followed these, providing, if my
lady was dead, or if Miss Rachel was dead, at
the time of the testator's decease, for the
Diamond being sent to Holland, in accordance
with the sealed instructions originally deposited
with it. The proceeds of the sale were, in that
case, to be added to the money already left by
the Will for the professorship of chemistry at
the university in the north.

I handed the paper back to Mr. Franklin,
sorely troubled what to say to him. Up to that
moment, my own opinion had been (as you
know) that the Colonel had died as wickedly as
he had lived. I don't say the copy from his
Will actually converted me from that opinion:
I only say it staggered me.

"Well," says Mr. Franklin, "now you have
read the Colonel's own statement, what do you
say? In bringing the Moonstone to my aunt's
house, am I serving his vengeance blindfold, or
am I vindicating him in the character of a penitent
and Christian man?"

"It seems hard to say, sir," I answered, "that
he died with a horrid revenge in his heart, and
a horrid lie on his lips. God alone knows the
truth. Don't ask me."

Mr. Franklin sat twisting and turning the
extract from the Will in his fingers, as if he
expected to squeeze the truth out of it in that
manner. He altered quite remarkably, at the
same time. From being brisk and bright, he now
became, most unaccountably, a slow, solemn,
and pondering young man.

"This question has two sides," he said.
"An Objective side, and a Subjective side.
Which are we to take?"

He had had a German education as well as
a French. One of the two had been in
undisturbed possession of him (as I supposed) up to
this time. And now (as well as I could make
out) the other was taking its place. It is one
of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't
understand. I steered a middle course between
the Objective side and the Subjective side.
In plain English I stared hard, and said nothing.

"Let's extract the inner meaning of this,"
says Mr. Franklin. "Why did my uncle leave
the Diamond to Rachel? Why didn't he leave
it to my aunt?"

"That's not beyond guessing, sir, at any
rate," I said. "Colonel Herncastle knew my
lady well enough to know that she would have
refused to accept any legacy that came to her
from him."

"How did he know that Rachel might not
refuse to accept it too?"

"Is there any young lady in existence, sir,
who could resist the temptation of accepting
such a birthday present as The Moonstone?"

"That's the Subjective view," says Mr.
Franklin. "It does you great credit,
Betteredge, to be able to take the Subjective view.
But there's another mystery about the Colonel's
legacy which is not accounted for yet. How
are we to explain his only giving Rachel her
birthday present conditionally on her mother
being alive?"

"I don't want to slander a dead man, sir,"
I answered. "But if he has purposely left a
legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, by
the means of her child, it must be a legacy
made conditional on his sister's being alive to
feel the vexation of it."

"Oh! That's your interpretation of his
motive, is it? The Subjective interpretation
again! Have you ever been in Germany,
Betteredge?"

"No, sir. What's your interpretation, if
you please?"

"I can see," says Mr. Franklin, "that the
Colonel's object may, quite possibly, have
been—not to benefit his niece, whom he had
never even seen—but to prove to his sister
that he had died forgiving her, and to prove it
very prettily by means of a present made to her
child. There is a totally different explanation
from yours, Betteredge, taking its rise in a
Subjective-Objective point of view. From all
I can see, one interpretation is just as likely to
be right as the other."

Having brought matters to this pleasant and
comforting issue, Mr. Franklin appeared to
think that he had completed all that was
required of him. He laid down flat on his back
on the sand, and asked what was to be done
next.

He had been so clever and clear-headed
(before he began to talk the foreign gibberish),
and had so completely taken the lead in the business
up to the present time, that I was quite
unprepared for such a sudden change as he now
exhibited in this helpless leaning upon me. It
was not till later that I learned—by assistance of
Miss Rachel, who was the first to make the
discovery—that these puzzling shifts and
transformations in Mr. Franklin were due to the
effect on him of his foreign training. At