This seemed certainly to be the only rational explanation. But how had

the thief contrived to make his escape from the house? I had found the

front door locked and bolted, as I had left it at night, when I went

to open it, after getting up. As for the other doors and windows, there

they were still, all safe and fast, to speak for themselves. The dogs,

too? Suppose the thief had got away by dropping from one of the upper

windows, how had he escaped the dogs? Had he come provided for them with

drugged meat? As the doubt crossed my mind, the dogs themselves came

galloping at me round a corner, rolling each other over on the wet

grass, in such lively health and spirits that it was with no small

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difficulty I brought them to reason, and chained them up again. The

more I turned it over in my mind, the less satisfactory Mr. Franklin's

explanation appeared to be.

We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder,

it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast. When we had done, my

lady sent for me; and I found myself compelled to tell her all that I

had hitherto concealed, relating to the Indians and their plot. Being a

woman of a high courage, she soon got over the first startling effect

of what I had to communicate. Her mind seemed to be far more perturbed

about her daughter than about the heathen rogues and their conspiracy.

"You know how odd Rachel is, and how differently she behaves sometimes

from other girls," my lady said to me. "But I have never, in all my

experience, seen her so strange and so reserved as she is now. The

loss of her jewel seems almost to have turned her brain. Who would have

thought that horrible Diamond could have laid such a hold on her in so

short a time?"

It was certainly strange. Taking toys and trinkets in general, Miss

Rachel was nothing like so mad after them as most young girls. Yet there

she was, still locked up inconsolably in her bedroom. It is but fair to

add that she was not the only one of us in the house who was thrown out

of the regular groove. Mr. Godfrey, for instance--though professionally

a sort of consoler-general--seemed to be at a loss where to look for his

own resources. Having no company to amuse him, and getting no chance

of trying what his experience of women in distress could do towards

comforting Miss Rachel, he wandered hither and thither about the house

and gardens in an aimless uneasy way. He was in two different minds

about what it became him to do, after the misfortune that had happened

to us. Ought he to relieve the family, in their present situation, of

the responsibility of him as a guest, or ought he to stay on the

chance that even his humble services might be of some use? He decided

ultimately that the last course was perhaps the most customary and

considerate course to take, in such a very peculiar case of family

distress as this was. Circumstances try the metal a man is really made

of. Mr. Godfrey, tried by circumstances, showed himself of weaker

metal than I had thought him to be. As for the women-servants excepting

Rosanna Spearman, who kept by herself--they took to whispering together

in corners, and staring at nothing suspiciously, as is the manner

of that weaker half of the human family, when anything extraordinary

happens in a house. I myself acknowledge to have been fidgety and

ill-tempered. The cursed Moonstone had turned us all upside down.




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