“I must ask your ladyship,” he said, “to look this matter in the face, from my point of view as well as from yours.  Will you please to suppose yourself coming down here, in my place, and with my experience? and will you allow me to mention very briefly what that experience has been?”

My mistress signed to him that she would do this.  The Sergeant went on: 

“For the last twenty years,” he said, “I have been largely employed in cases of family scandal, acting in the capacity of confidential man.  The one result of my domestic practice which has any bearing on the matter now in hand, is a result which I may state in two words.  It is well within my experience, that young ladies of rank and position do occasionally have private debts which they dare not acknowledge to their nearest relatives and friends.  Sometimes, the milliner and the jeweller are at the bottom of it.  Sometimes, the money is wanted for purposes which I don’t suspect in this case, and which I won’t shock you by mentioning.  Bear in mind what I have said, my lady—­and now let us see how events in this house have forced me back on my own experience, whether I liked it or not!”

He considered with himself for a moment, and went on—­with a horrid clearness that obliged you to understand him; with an abominable justice that favoured nobody.

“My first information relating to the loss of the Moonstone,” said the Sergeant, “came to me from Superintendent Seegrave.  He proved to my complete satisfaction that he was perfectly incapable of managing the case.  The one thing he said which struck me as worth listening to, was this—­that Miss Verinder had declined to be questioned by him, and had spoken to him with a perfectly incomprehensible rudeness and contempt.  I thought this curious—­but I attributed it mainly to some clumsiness on the Superintendent’s part which might have offended the young lady.  After that, I put it by in my mind, and applied myself, single-handed, to the case.  It ended, as you are aware, in the discovery of the smear on the door, and in Mr. Franklin Blake’s evidence satisfying me, that this same smear, and the loss of the Diamond, were pieces of the same puzzle.  So far, if I suspected anything, I suspected that the Moonstone had been stolen, and that one of the servants might prove to be the thief.  Very good.  In this state of things, what happens?  Miss Verinder suddenly comes out of her room, and speaks to me.  I observe three suspicious appearances in that young lady.  She is still violently agitated, though more than four-and-twenty hours have passed since the Diamond was lost.  She treats me as she has already treated Superintendent Seegrave.  And she is mortally offended with Mr. Franklin Blake.  Very good again.  Here (I say to myself) is a young lady who has lost a valuable jewel—­a young lady, also, as my own eyes and ears inform me, who is of an impetuous temperament.  Under these circumstances, and with that character, what does she do?  She