t you might say to me (though you HAD taken the Diamond) if I
presumed to tell you that I had found it out. I had gone as near to it
as I dared when I spoke to you in the library. You had not turned your
back on me then. You had not started away from me as if I had got the
plague. I tried to provoke myself into feeling angry with you, and to
rouse up my courage in that way. No! I couldn't feel anything but the
misery and the mortification of it. You're a plain girl; you have got
a crooked shoulder; you're only a housemaid--what do you mean by
attempting to speak to Me?" You never uttered a word of that, Mr.
Franklin; but you said it all to me, nevertheless! Is such madness as
this to be accounted for? No. There is nothing to be done but to confess
it, and let it be.

"I ask your pardon, once more, for this wandering of my pen. There is no
fear of its happening again. I am close at the end now.

"The first person who disturbed me by coming into the empty room was
Penelope. She had found out my secret long since, and she had done her
best to bring me to my senses--and done it kindly too.

"'Ah!' she said, 'I know why you're sitting here, and fretting, all by
yourself. The best thing that can happen for your advantage, Rosanna,
will be for Mr. Franklin's visit here to come to an end. It's my belief
that he won't be long now before he leaves the house."

"In all my thoughts of you I had never thought of your going away. I
couldn't speak to Penelope. I could only look at her.

"'I've just left Miss Rachel,' Penelope went on. 'And a hard matter
I have had of it to put up with her temper. She says the house is
unbearable to her with the police in it; and she's determined to speak
to my lady this evening, and to go to her Aunt Ablewhite to-morrow. If
she does that, Mr. Franklin will be the next to find a reason for going
away, you may depend on it!'

"I recovered the use of my tongue at that. 'Do you mean to say Mr.
Franklin will go with her?' I asked.

"'Only too gladly, if she would let him; but she won't. HE has been made
to feel her temper; HE is in her black books too--and that after having
done all he can to help her, poor fellow! No! no! If they don't make
it up before to-morrow, you will see Miss Rachel go one way, and Mr.
Franklin another. Where he may betake himself to I can't say. But he
will never stay here, Rosanna, after Miss Rachel has left us.'

"I managed to master the despair I felt at the prospect of