xt morning Mr. Franklin had started for foreign parts. To what
particular place he was bound, nobody (himself included) could presume
to guess. We might hear of him next in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America.
The chances were as equally divided as possible, in Mr. Jeffco's
opinion, among the four quarters of the globe.

This news--by closing up all prospects of my bringing Limping Lucy and
Mr. Franklin together--at once stopped any further progress of mine
on the way to discovery. Penelope's belief that her fellow-servant had
destroyed herself through unrequited love for Mr. Franklin Blake, was
confirmed--and that was all. Whether the letter which Rosanna had
left to be given to him after her death did, or did not, contain the
confession which Mr. Franklin had suspected her of trying to make to him
in her life-time, it was impossible to say. It might be only a farewell
word, telling nothing but the secret of her unhappy fancy for a person
beyond her reach. Or it might own the whole truth about the strange
proceedings in which Sergeant Cuff had detected her, from the time
when the Moonstone was lost, to the time when she rushed to her own
destruction at the Shivering Sand. A sealed letter it had been placed in
Limping Lucy's hand, and a sealed letter it remained to me and to every
one about the girl, her own parents included. We all suspected her of
having been in the dead woman's confidence; we all tried to make her
speak; we all failed. Now one, and now another, of the servants--still
holding to the belief that Rosanna had stolen the Diamond and had hidden
it--peered and poked about the rocks to which she had been traced,
and peered and poked in vain. The tide ebbed, and the tide flowed; the
summer went on, and the autumn came. And the Quicksand, which hid her
body, hid her secret too.

The news of Mr. Franklin's departure from England on the Sunday morning,
and the news of my lady's arrival in London with Miss Rachel on the
Monday afternoon, had reached me, as you are aware, by the Tuesday's
post. The Wednesday came, and brought nothing. The Thursday produced a
second budget of news from Penelope.

My girl's letter informed me that some great London doctor had been
consulted about her young lady, and had earned a guinea by remarking
that she had better be amused. Flower-shows, operas, balls--there was
a whole round of gaieties in prospect; and Miss Rachel, to her mother's
astonishment, eagerly took to it all. Mr. Godf