“Were you passing through the hall, sir?” I asked.  “Did you meet her accidentally, when she spoke to you?”

Mr. Franklin pointed to the billiard-table.

“I was knocking the balls about,” he said, “and trying to get this miserable business of the Diamond out of my mind.  I happened to look up—­and there stood Rosanna Spearman at the side of me, like a ghost!  Her stealing on me in that way was so strange, that I hardly knew what to do at first.  Seeing a very anxious expression in her face, I asked her if she wished to speak to me.  She answered, ‘Yes, if I dare.’  Knowing what suspicion attached to her, I could only put one construction on such language as that.  I confess it made me uncomfortable.  I had no wish to invite the girl’s confidence.  At the same time, in the difficulties that now beset us, I could hardly feel justified in refusing to listen to her, if she was really bent on speaking to me.  It was an awkward position; and I dare say I got out of it awkwardly enough.  I said to her, ’I don’t quite understand you.  Is there anything you want me to do?’ Mind, Betteredge, I didn’t speak unkindly!  The poor girl can’t help being ugly—­I felt that, at the time.  The cue was still in my hand, and I went on knocking the balls about, to take off the awkwardness of the thing.  As it turned out, I only made matters worse still.  I’m afraid I mortified her without meaning it!  She suddenly turned away.  ‘He looks at the billiard balls,’ I heard her say.  ‘Anything rather than look at me!’ Before I could stop her, she had left the hall.  I am not quite easy about it, Betteredge.  Would you mind telling Rosanna that I meant no unkindness?  I have been a little hard on her, perhaps, in my own thoughts—­I have almost hoped that the loss of the Diamond might be traced to her.  Not from any ill-will to the poor girl:  but——­” He stopped there, and going back to the billiard-table, began to knock the balls about once more.

After what had passed between the Sergeant and me, I knew what it was that he had left unspoken as well as he knew it himself.

Nothing but the tracing of the Moonstone to our second housemaid could now raise Miss Rachel above the infamous suspicion that rested on her in the mind of Sergeant Cuff.  It was no longer a question of quieting my young lady’s nervous excitement; it was a question of proving her innocence.  If Rosanna had done nothing to compromise herself, the hope which Mr. Franklin confessed to having felt would have been hard enough on her in all conscience.  But this was not the case.  She had pretended to be ill, and had gone secretly to Frizinghall.  She had been up all night, making something or destroying something, in private.  And she had been at the Shivering Sand, that evening, under circumstances which were highly suspicious, to say the least of them.  For all these reasons (sorry as I was for Rosanna) I could not but think that Mr. Franklin’s way of looking at the matter was neither unnatural nor unreasonable, in Mr. Franklin’s position.  I said a word to him to that effect.