hall. "I will try the
experiment on Miss Verinder as boldly as you could try it yourself. And
I will inform you of the result, either personally or by letter, before
the last train leaves for London to-night."

With that, she stepped into the chaise, and, taking the reins herself,
drove off to Frizinghall.

CHAPTER XXII

My mistress having left us, I had leisure to think of Sergeant Cuff.
I found him sitting in a snug corner of the hall, consulting his
memorandum book, and curling up viciously at the corners of the lips.

"Making notes of the case?" I asked.

"No," said the Sergeant. "Looking to see what my next professional
engagement is."

"Oh!" I said. "You think it's all over then, here?"

"I think," answered Sergeant Cuff, "that Lady Verinder is one of the
cleverest women in England. I also think a rose much better worth
looking at than a diamond. Where is the gardener, Mr. Betteredge?"

There was no getting a word more out of him on the matter of the
Moonstone. He had lost all interest in his own inquiry; and he would
persist in looking for the gardener. An hour afterwards, I heard them
at high words in the conservatory, with the dog-rose once more at the
bottom of the dispute.

In the meantime, it was my business to find out whether Mr. Franklin
persisted in his resolution to leave us by the afternoon train. After
having been informed of the conference in my lady's room, and of how
it had ended, he immediately decided on waiting to hear the news from
Frizinghall. This very natural alteration in his plans--which, with
ordinary people, would have led to nothing in particular--proved, in
Mr. Franklin's case, to have one objectionable result. It left him
unsettled, with a legacy of idle time on his hands, and, in so doing,
it let out all the foreign sides of his character, one on the top of
another, like rats out of a bag.

Now as an Italian-Englishman, now as a German-Englishman, and now as a
French-Englishman, he drifted in and out of all the sitting-rooms in the
house, with nothing to talk of but Miss Rachel's treatment of him; and
with nobody to address himself to but me. I found him (for example) in
the library, sitting under the map of Modern Italy, and quite unaware of
any other method of meeting his troubles, except the method of talking
about them. "I have several worthy aspirations, Betteredge; but what am
I to do with them now? I am full of dormant good qualities, if Rachel
would only h