Objective-Subjective explanation follows, of
course! Rachel, properly speaking, is not
Rachel, but Somebody Else. Do I mind
being cruelly treated by Somebody Else? You
are unreasonable enough, Betteredge; but
you can hardly accuse me of that. Then how
does it end? It ends, in spite of your
confounded English narrowness and prejudice, in
my being perfectly happy and comfortable.
Where's the sherry?"

My head was by this time in such a condition,
that I was not quite sure whether it was my
own head, or Mr. Franklin's. In this deplorable
state, I contrived to do, what I take to have
been, three Objective things. I got Mr. Franklin
his sherry; I retired to my own room; and
I solaced myself with the most composing pipe
of tobacco I ever remember to have smoked in
my life.

Don't suppose, however, that I was quit of
Mr. Franklin on such easy terms as these.
Drifting again, out of the morning-room into
the hall, he found his way to the offices next,
smelt my pipe, and was instantly reminded that
he had been simple enough to give up smoking
for Miss Rachel's sake. In the twinkling of
an eye, he burst in on me with his cigar-case,
and came out strong on the one everlasting
subject, in his neat, witty, unbelieving, French way.
"Give me a light, Betteredge. Is it conceivable
that a man can have smoked as long as I have,
without discovering that there is a complete
system for the treatment of women at the
bottom of his cigar-case? Follow me, carefully,
and I'll prove it in two words. You choose a
cigar, you try it, and it disappoints you. What do
you do, upon that? You throw it away, and
try another. Now observe the application!
You choose a woman, you try her, and she
breaks your heart. Fool! take a lesson from
your cigar-case. Throw her away, and try
another!"

I shook my head at that. Wonderfully clever,
I dare say, but my own experience was dead against
it. "In the time of the late Mrs. Betteredge,"
I said, "I felt pretty often inclined to try your
philosophy, Mr. Franklin. But the law insists
on your smoking your cigar, sir, when you have
once chosen it." I pointed that observation
with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laughing
—and we were as merry as crickets, until the
next new side of his character turned up in due
course. So things went on with my young
master and me; and so (while the Sergeant and
the gardener were wrangling over the roses)
we two spent the interval before the news came
back from Frizinghall.

The pony chaise returned a good half hour
before I had ventured to expect it. My
lady had decided to remain, for the present, at
her sister's house. The groom brought two
letters from his mistress; one addressed to Mr.
Franklin, and the other to me.

Mr. Franklin's letter I sent to him in the
library—into which refuge his driftings had
now taken him for the second time. My own
letter, I read in my own room. A cheque,
which dropped out when I opened it, informed
me (before I had mastered the contents) that
Sergeant Cuff's dismissal from the inquiry after
the Moonstone was now a settled thing.

I sent to the conservatory to say that I wished
to speak to the Sergeant directly. He appeared,
with his mind full of the gardener and the dog-rose,
declaring that the equal of Mr. Begbie for
obstinacy never had existed yet, and never would
exist again. I requested him to dismiss such
wretched trifling as this from our conversation,
and to give his best attention to a really serious
matter. Upon that he exerted himself sufficiently
to notice the letter in my hand. "Ah!" he said
in a weary way, "you have heard from her
ladyship. Have I anything to do with it, Mr.
Betteredge?"

"You shall judge for yourself, Sergeant."
I thereupon read him the letter (with my
best emphasis and discretion), in the following
words:

"'MY GOOD GABRIEL,—I request you will
inform Sergeant Cuff, that I have performed the
promise I made to him; with this result,
so far as Rosanna Spearman is concerned. Miss
Verinder solemnly declares, that she has never
spoken a word in private, to Rosanna, since that
unhappy woman first entered my house. They
never met, even accidentally, on the night when
the Diamond was lost; and no communication
of any sort whatever took place between them,
from the Thursday morning when the alarm was
first raised in the house, to this present Saturday
afternoon, when Miss Verinder left us.
After telling my daughter, suddenly and in so
many words, of Rosanna Spearman's suicide—
this is what has come of it.'"

Having reached that point, I looked up, and
asked Sergeant Cuff what he thought of the
letter, so far?

"I should only offend you if I expressed my
opinion," answered the Sergeant. "Go on, Mr.
Betteredge," he said, with the most exasperating
resignation, "go on."

When I remembered that this man had had
the audacity to complain of our gardener's
obstinacy, my tongue itched to "go on" in
other words than my mistress's. This time,
however, my Christianity held firm. I
proceeded steadily with her ladyship's letter:

"'Having appealed to Miss Verinder in the
manner which the officer thought most desirable,
I spoke to her next in the manner which I
myself thought most likely to impress her.
On two different occasions, before my
daughter left my roof, I privately warned her
that she was exposing herself to suspicion of
the most unendurable and most degrading kind.
I have now told her, in the plainest terms, that
my apprehensions have been realised.

"'Her answer to this, on her own solemn
affirmation, is as plain as words can be. In the
first place, she owes no money privately to