ide of your dressing-gown--not the linen
dressing-gown you usually wore in that summer season, but a flannel
dressing-gown which you had with you also. I suppose you felt chilly
after walking to and fro in nothing but your nightdress, and put on the
warmest thing you could find. At any rate, there were the stains, just
visible, on the inside of the dressing-gown. I easily got rid of these
by scraping away the stuff of the flannel. This done, the only proof
left against you was the proof locked up in my drawer.

"I had just finished your room when I was sent for to be questioned
by Mr. Seegrave, along with the rest of the servants. Next came the
examination of all our boxes. And then followed the most extraordinary
event of the day--to ME--since I had found the paint on your nightgown.
This event came out of the second questioning of Penelope Betteredge by
Superintendent Seegrave.

"Penelope returned to us quite beside herself with rage at the manner
in which Mr. Seegrave had treated her. He had hinted, beyond the
possibility of mistaking him, that he suspected her of being the thief.
We were all equally astonished at hearing this, and we all asked, Why?

"'Because the Diamond was in Miss Rachel's sitting-room," Penelope
answered. "And because I was the last person in the sitting-room at
night!"

"Almost before the words had left her lips, I remembered that another
person had been in the sitting-room later than Penelope. That person
was yourself. My head whirled round, and my thoughts were in dreadful
confusion. In the midst of it all, something in my mind whispered to me
that the smear on your nightgown might have a meaning entirely different
to the meaning which I had given to it up to that time. 'If the last
person who was in the room is the person to be suspected,' I thought to
myself, 'the thief is not Penelope, but Mr. Franklin Blake!'

"In the case of any other gentleman, I believe I should have been
ashamed of suspecting him of theft, almost as soon as the suspicion had
passed through my mind.

"But the bare thought that YOU had let yourself down to my level, and
that I, in possessing myself of your nightgown, had also possessed
myself of the means of shielding you from being discovered, and
disgraced for life--I say, sir, the bare thought of this seemed to
open such a chance before me of winning your good will, that I passed
blindfold, as one may say, from suspecting to believing. I made up my
mind, on th