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 with 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 Frizinghall—to
escort his cousins, as he told my lady. To fetch
the Moonstone, as was privately known to
himself and to me.

This being one of the high festivals on which
I took my place at the side-board, in command
of the attendance at 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 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' hoofs outside;
and, going to the door, received a cavalcade
comprising Mr. Franklin and his three
cousins, escorted by one of old Mr. Ablewhite'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 Betteredge 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 Ablewhites 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 superabundant flesh and blood;
bursting from head to foot with health and
spirits. The legs of the poor horses trembled
with carrying them; and when they jumped
from their saddles (without waiting to be
helped), I declare they bounced on the ground
as if they were made of india-rubber.
Everything the Miss Ablewhites 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.
Bouncers—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 a glimpse." With that answer, he
asked for my lady, and, hearing she was in the
small drawing-room, went there straight. 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
recognised in the screams the favourite large O
of the Miss Ablewhites. 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 Bouncers, devouring the
jewel with their eyes, and screaming with
exstacy every time it flashed on them in a
new light. There, at the opposite side 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 book-case, tugging at his beard,
and looking anxiously towards the window.
And there, at the window, stood the object 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 a proof that he was worse than the worst she
had ever thought of him? Serious questions,
those, 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 bless us! 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