My daughter replied, that Mr. Franklin might strike in, and try his
luck, before the verses were followed by the poet. In favour of this
view, I must acknowledge that Mr. Franklin left no chance untried of
winning Miss Rachel's good graces.
Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with, he gave up
his cigar, because she said, one day, she hated the stale smell of it
in his clothes. He slept so badly, after this effort of self-denial, for
want of the composing effect of the tobacco to which he was used, and
came down morning after morning looking so haggard and worn, that Miss
Rachel herself begged him to take to his cigars again. No! he would take
to nothing again that could cause her a moment's annoyance; he would
fight it out resolutely, and get back his sleep, sooner or later, by
main force of patience in waiting for it. Such devotion as this, you may
say (as some of them said downstairs), could never fail of producing
the right effect on Miss Rachel--backed up, too, as it was, by the
decorating work every day on the door. All very well--but she had a
photograph of Mr. Godfrey in her bed-room; represented speaking at a
public meeting, with all his hair blown out by the breath of his own
eloquence, and his eyes, most lovely, charming the money out of your
pockets. What do you say to that? Every morning--as Penelope herself
owned to me--there was the man whom the women couldn't do without,
looking on, in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair combed. He
would be looking on, in reality, before long--that was my opinion of it.
June the sixteenth brought an event which made Mr. Franklin's chance
look, to my mind, a worse chance than ever.
A strange gentleman, speaking English with a foreign accent, came that
morning to the house, and asked to see Mr. Franklin Blake on business.
The business could not possibly have been connected with the Diamond,
for these two reasons--first, that Mr. Franklin told me nothing about
it; secondly, that he communicated it (when the gentleman had gone, as I
suppose) to my lady. She probably hinted something about it next to her
daughter. At any rate, Miss Rachel was reported to have said some severe
things to Mr. Franklin, at the piano that evening, about the people he
had lived among, and the principles he had adopted in foreign parts. The
next day, for the first time, nothing was done towards the decoration
of the door. I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin's on the
Continent--with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it--had followed
him to England. But that is all guesswork. In this case, not only Mr.
Franklin, but my lady too, for a wonder, left me in the dark.