THE MOONSTONE.

By the Author of "The Woman In White," &c. &c.

CHAPTER X.

One on the top of the other, the rest of the
company followed the Ablewhites, 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 Frizinghall (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 centre-point towards which everybody's
eyes were directed; for (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 Frizinghall.

This was a pleasant, companionable little
man, with the drawback, however, I must own,
of being too fond, in season and out of season,
of his joke, and of plunging in rather a headlong
manner into 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 interests 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 safe keeping
of a valuable precious stone!" My lady,
listening with rather a careworn expression on
her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had
been in earnest, and that he could have found
Miss Rachel zealous 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 eminent public character—
being no other than the celebrated Indian
traveller, Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of
his life, had penetrated in disguise 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
attentive eye. It was rumoured 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 in 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 Verinder, don't take your uncle's
birthday gift with you. A Hindoo diamond is
sometimes a part of a Hindoo 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 forks with a crash,
and burst out together vehemently, "O! how
interesting!" My lady fidgeted in her chair,
and changed the subject.

As the dinner got on, I became aware, little