Having had some experience of the great Cuff's round-about ways, and

having last seen him evidently bent on following Rosanna privately when

she went out for her walk, it seemed clear to me that he had thought it

unadvisable to let the lady's maid and the housemaid know how materially

they had helped him. They were just the sort of women, if he had treated

their evidence as trustworthy, to have been puffed up by it, and to

have said or done something which would have put Rosanna Spearman on her

guard.

I walked out in the fine summer afternoon, very sorry for the poor

girl, and very uneasy in my mind at the turn things had taken. Drifting

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towards the shrubbery, some time later, there I met Mr. Franklin. After

returning from seeing his cousin off at the station, he had been with

my lady, holding a long conversation with her. She had told him of Miss

Rachel's unaccountable refusal to let her wardrobe be examined; and had

put him in such low spirits about my young lady that he seemed to shrink

from speaking on the subject. The family temper appeared in his face

that evening, for the first time in my experience of him.

"Well, Betteredge," he said, "how does the atmosphere of mystery

and suspicion in which we are all living now, agree with you? Do you

remember that morning when I first came here with the Moonstone? I wish

to God we had thrown it into the quicksand!"

After breaking out in that way, he abstained from speaking again until

he had composed himself. We walked silently, side by side, for a minute

or two, and then he asked me what had become of Sergeant Cuff. It was

impossible to put Mr. Franklin off with the excuse of the Sergeant being

in my room, composing his mind. I told him exactly what had happened,

mentioning particularly what my lady's maid and the house-maid had said

about Rosanna Spearman.

Mr. Franklin's clear head saw the turn the Sergeant's suspicions had

taken, in the twinkling of an eye.

"Didn't you tell me this morning," he said, "that one of the

tradespeople declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to

Frizinghall, when we supposed her to be ill in her room?"

"Yes, sir."

"If my aunt's maid and the other woman have spoken the truth, you may

depend upon it the tradesman did meet her. The girl's attack of illness

was a blind to deceive us. She had some guilty reason for going to the

town secretly. The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and the fire

heard crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire lit

to destroy it. Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond. I'll go in

directly, and tell my aunt the turn things have taken."




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