of your batteries on me at the moment when I
least expected it. You would have done great
things in my profession, ma'am, if you had
happened to be a man."

With those words he turned away from me,
and began walking irritably up and down the
room.

I could see plainly that the new light I
had thrown on the subject had greatly
surprised and disturbed him. Certain expressions
dropped from his lips as he became more and
more absorbed in his own thoughts, which
suggested to my mind the abominable view
that he had hitherto taken of the mystery of the
lost Moonstone. He had not scrupled to
suspect dear Mr. Godfrey of the infamy of taking
the Diamond, and to attribute Rachel's conduct
to a generous resolution to conceal the crime.
On Miss Verinder's own authority—a
perfectly unassailable authority, as you are aware,
in the estimation of Mr. Bruff—that explanation
of the circumstances was now shown to be
utterly wrong. The perplexity into which I
had plunged this high legal authority was
so overwhelming that he was quite unable to
conceal it from notice. " What a case!" I
heard him say to himself, stopping at the window
in his walk, and drumming on the glass with
his fingers. "It not only defies explanation,
it's even beyond conjecture!"

There was nothing in those words which
made any reply at all needful, on my part—and
yet, I answered them! It seems hardly
credible that I should not have been able to let
Mr. Bruff alone, even now. It seems almost
beyond mere mortal perversity that I should
have discovered, in what he had just said, a
new opportunity of making myself personally
disagreeable to him. But—ah, my friends!
nothing is beyond mortal perversity; and
anything is credible when our fallen natures get
the better of us!

"Pardon me for intruding on your reflections,"
I said to the unsuspecting Mr. Bruff.
"But surely there is a conjecture to make
which has not occurred to us yet?"

"Maybe, Miss Clack. I own I don't know
what it is."

"Before I was so fortunate, sir, as to
convince you of Mr. Ablewhite's innocence, you
mentioned it as one of the reasons for suspecting
him, that he was in the house at the time
when the Diamond was lost. Permit me to
remind you that Mr. Franklin Blake was also
in the house at the time when the Diamond
was lost."

The old worldling left the window, took a
chair exactly opposite to mine, and looked at
me steadily, with a hard and vicious smile.'

"You are not so good a lawyer, Miss Clack,"
he remarked, in a meditative manner, " as I
supposed. You don't know how to let well
alone."

"I am afraid I fail to follow you, Mr. Bruif,"
I said, modestly.

"It won't do. Miss Clack—it really won't
do a second time. Franklin Blake is a prime
favourite of mine, as you are well aware. But
that doesn't matter. I'll adopt your view, on
this occasion, before you have time to turn
round on me. You're quite right, ma'am. I
have suspected Mr. Ablewhite, on grounds
which abstractedly justify suspecting Mr. Blake
too. Very good—let's suspect him together.
It's quite in his character, we will say, to be
capable of stealing the Moonstone. The only
question is, whether it was his interest to
do it."

"Mr. Franklin Blake's debts," I remarked,
"are matters of family notoriety."

"And Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite's debts have
not arrived at that stage of development yet.
Quite true. But there happen to be two
difficulties in the way of your theory, Miss Clack.
I manage Franklin Blake's affairs, and I beg to
inform you that the vast majority of his
creditors (knowing his father to be a rich man)
are quite content to charge interest on their
debts, and to wait for their money. There is
the first difficulty—which is tough enough.
You will find the second tougher still. I have
it on the authority of Lady Verinder herself,
that her daughter was ready to marry Franklin
Blake, before that infernal Indian Diamond
disappeared from the house. She had drawn him
on and put him off again, with the coquetry of
a young girl. But she had confessed to her
mother that she loved cousin Franklin, and her
mother had trusted cousin Franklin with the
secret. So there he was, Miss Clack, with his
creditors content to wait, and with the certain
prospect before him of marrying an heiress.
By all means consider him a scoundrel; but
tell me, if you please, why he should steal the
Moonstone?"

"The human heart is unsearchable," I said
gently. " Who is to fathom it?"

"In other words, ma'am—though he hadn't
the shadow of a reason for taking the Diamond
—he might have taken it, nevertheless, through
natural depravity. Very well. Say he did.
Why the devil—-?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Bruff. If I hear the
devil referred to in that manner, I must leave
the room."

"I beg your pardon, Miss Clack—I'll be
more careful in my choice of language for the
future. All I meant to ask was this. Why—
even supposing he did take the Diamond—
should Franklin Blake make himself the most
prominent person in the house, in trying to
recover it? You may tell me he cunningly did
that to divert suspicion from himself. I answer
that he had no need to divert suspicion—
because nobody suspected him. He first steals
the Moonstone (without the slightest reason)
through natural depravity; and he then acts a
part, in relation to the loss of the jewel, which
there is not the slightest necessity to act, and
which leads to his mortally offending the young
lady who would otherwise have married him.
That is the monstrous proposition which you
are driven to assert, if you attempt to associate
the disappearance of the Moonstone with