“Your sherry is waiting for you, sir,” I said to him.  I might as well have addressed myself to one of the four walls of the room; he was down in the bottomless deep of his own meditations, past all pulling up.  “How do you explain Rachel’s conduct, Betteredge?” was the only answer I received.  Not being ready with the needful reply, I produced Robinson Crusoe, in which I am firmly persuaded some explanation might have been found, if we had only searched long enough for it.  Mr. Franklin shut up Robinson Crusoe, and floundered into his German-English gibberish on the spot.  “Why not look into it?” he said, as if I had personally objected to looking into it.  “Why the devil lose your patience, Betteredge, when patience is all that’s wanted to arrive at the truth?  Don’t interrupt me.  Rachel’s conduct is perfectly intelligible, if you will only do her the common justice to take the Objective view first, and the Subjective view next, and the Objective-Subjective view to wind up with.  What do we know?  We know that the loss of the Moonstone, on Thursday morning last, threw her into a state of nervous excitement, from which she has not recovered yet.  Do you mean to deny the Objective view, so far?  Very well, then—­don’t interrupt me.  Now, being in a state of nervous excitement, how are we to expect that she should behave as she might otherwise have behaved to any of the people about her?  Arguing in this way, from within-outwards, what do we reach?  We reach the Subjective view.  I defy you to controvert the Subjective view.  Very well then—­what follows?  Good Heavens! the 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