risoner in charge. Ah, well! well! I own I couldn't
help liking the Sergeant--though I hated him all the time.

Explain that state of mind, if you can. You will soon be rid, now, of
me and my contradictions. When I have reported Mr. Franklin's departure,
the history of the Saturday's events will be finished at last. And when
I have next described certain strange things that happened in the course
of the new week, I shall have done my part of the Story, and shall hand
over the pen to the person who is appointed to follow my lead. If you
are as tired of reading this narrative as I am of writing it--Lord, how
we shall enjoy ourselves on both sides a few pages further on!

CHAPTER XXIII

I had kept the pony chaise ready, in case Mr. Franklin persisted in
leaving us by the train that night. The appearance of the luggage,
followed downstairs by Mr. Franklin himself, informed me plainly enough
that he had held firm to a resolution for once in his life.

"So you have really made up your mind, sir?" I said, as we met in the
hall. "Why not wait a day or two longer, and give Miss Rachel another
chance?"

The foreign varnish appeared to have all worn off Mr. Franklin, now
that the time had come for saying good-bye. Instead of replying to me in
words, he put the letter which her ladyship had addressed to him into my
hand. The greater part of it said over again what had been said already
in the other communication received by me. But there was a bit about
Miss Rachel added at the end, which will account for the steadiness of
Mr. Franklin's determination, if it accounts for nothing else.

"You will wonder, I dare say" (her ladyship wrote), "at my allowing my
own daughter to keep me perfectly in the dark. A Diamond worth twenty
thousand pounds has been lost--and I am left to infer that the
mystery of its disappearance is no mystery to Rachel, and that some
incomprehensible obligation of silence has been laid on her, by some
person or persons utterly unknown to me, with some object in view at
which I cannot even guess. Is it conceivable that I should allow myself
to be trifled with in this way? It is quite conceivable, in Rachel's
present state. She is in a condition of nervous agitation pitiable to
see. I dare not approach the subject of the Moonstone again until time
has done something to quiet her. To help this end, I have not hesitated
to dismiss the police-officer. The mystery which baffles us, baffles him
too. This is