werable, here; but I tried to argue the
question, nevertheless.

"My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe," I replied,
"would depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature to
compromise my friend or not."

"I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the
question, long since," said Ezra Jennings. "Wherever my notes included
anything which Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes
have been destroyed. My manuscript experiments at my friend's bedside,
include nothing, now, which he would have hesitated to communicate to
others, if he had recovered the use of his memory. In your case, I
have every reason to suppose that my notes contain something which he
actually wished to say to you."

"And yet, you hesitate?"

"And yet, I hesitate. Remember the circumstances under which I obtained
the information which I possess! Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail
upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that there
is a reason for doing so. He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and he was
so helplessly dependent upon Me! Is it too much to ask, if I request you
only to hint to me what your interest is in the lost recollection--or
what you believe that lost recollection to be?"

To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his
manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly
acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond. Strongly
as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest which
I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable reluctance to
disclose the degrading position in which I stood. I took refuge once
more in the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared myself to meet
the curiosity of strangers.

This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the
part of the person to whom I addressed myself. Ezra Jennings listened
patiently, even anxiously, until I had done.

"I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to
disappoint them," he said. "Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy's
illness, from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his
lips. The matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can
assure you, no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the
recovery of Miss Verinder's jewel."

We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along
which we had been walking branched off in