"Let it be enough, if you please, to say only this. After thinking it
over to the best of my ability, I made it out that the thing wasn't
likely, for a reason that I will tell you. If you had been in Miss
Rachel's sitting-room, at that time of night, with Miss Rachel's
knowledge (and if you had been foolish enough to forget to take care of
the wet door) SHE would have reminded you--SHE would never have let you
carry away such a witness against her, as the witness I was looking at
now! At the same time, I own I was not completely certain in my own
mind that I had proved my own suspicion to be wrong. You will not have
forgotten that I have owned to hating Miss Rachel. Try to think, if you
can, that there was a little of that hatred in all this. It ended in my
determining to keep the nightgown, and to wait, and watch, and see what
use I might make of it. At that time, please to remember, not the ghost
of an idea entered my head that you had stolen the Diamond."
There, I broke off in the reading of the letter for the second time.
I had read those portions of the miserable woman's confession which
related to myself, with unaffected surprise, and, I can honestly add,
with sincere distress. I had regretted, truly regretted, the aspersion
which I had thoughtlessly cast on her memory, before I had seen a line
of her letter. But when I had advanced as far as the passage which is
quoted above, I own I felt my mind growing bitterer and bitterer against
Rosanna Spearman as I went on. "Read the rest for yourself," I said,
handing the letter to Betteredge across the table. "If there is anything
in it that I must look at, you can tell me as you go on."
"I understand you, Mr. Franklin," he answered. "It's natural, sir, in
YOU. And, God help us all!" he added, in a lower tone, "it's no less
natural in HER."
I proceed to copy the continuation of the letter from the original, in
my own possession:-"Having determined to keep the nightgown, and to see what use my love,
or my revenge (I hardly know which) could turn it to in the future,
the next thing to discover was how to keep it without the risk of being
found out.
"There was only one way--to make another nightgown exactly like it,
before Saturday came, and brought the laundry-woman and her inventory to
the house.
"I was afraid to put it off till next day (the Friday); being in doubt
lest some accident might happen in the interval. I determined to make
the new nightgown on that same day (the Thursday), while I could count,
if I played my cards properly, on having my time to myself. The first
thing to do (after locking up your nightgown in my drawer) was to go
back to your bed-room--not so much to put it to rights (Penelope would
have done that for me, if I had asked her) as to find out whether you
had smeared off any of the paint-stain from your nightgown, on the bed,
or on any piece of furniture in the room.