Such was the conversation, inside the study, as reported to me by Mr. Jeffco.  The conversation outside the study, was shorter still.  “Jeffco, see what time the tidal train starts to-morrow morning.”  “At six-forty, Mr. Franklin.”  “Have me called at five.”  “Going abroad, sir?” “Going, Jeffco, wherever the railway chooses to take me.”  “Shall I tell your father, sir?” “Yes; tell him at the end of the session.”

The next morning Mr. Franklin had started for foreign parts.  To what particular place he was bound, nobody (himself included) could presume to guess.  We might hear of him next in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America.  The chances were as equally divided as possible, in Mr. Jeffco’s opinion, among the four quarters of the globe.

This news—­by closing up all prospects of my bringing Limping Lucy and Mr. Franklin together—­at once stopped any further progress of mine on the way to discovery.  Penelope’s belief that her fellow-servant had destroyed herself through unrequited love for Mr. Franklin Blake, was confirmed—­and that was all.  Whether the letter which Rosanna had left to be given to him after her death did, or did not, contain the confession which Mr. Franklin had suspected her of trying to make to him in her life-time, it was impossible to say.  It might be only a farewell word, telling nothing but the secret of her unhappy fancy for a person beyond her reach.  Or it might own the whole truth about the strange proceedings in which Sergeant Cuff had detected her, from the time when the Moonstone was lost, to the time when she rushed to her own destruction at the Shivering Sand.  A sealed letter it had been placed in Limping Lucy’s hand, and a sealed letter it remained to me and to every one about the girl, her own parents included.  We all suspected her of having been in the dead woman’s confidence; we all tried to make her speak; we all failed.  Now one, and now another, of the servants—­still holding to the belief that Rosanna had stolen the Diamond and had hidden it—­peered and poked about the rocks to which she had been traced, and peered and poked in vain.  The tide ebbed, and the tide flowed; the summer went on, and the autumn came.  And the Quicksand, which hid her body, hid her secret too.

The news of Mr. Franklin’s departure from England on the Sunday morning, and the news of my lady’s arrival in London with Miss Rachel on the Monday afternoon, had reached me, as you are aware, by the Tuesday’s post.  The Wednesday came, and brought nothing.  The Thursday produced a second budget of news from Penelope.

My girl’s letter informed me that some great London doctor had been consulted about her young lady, and had earned a guinea by remarking that she had better be amused.  Flower-shows, operas, balls—­there was a whole round of gaieties in prospect; and Miss Rachel, to her mother’s astonishment, eagerly took to it all.  Mr. Godfrey had called; evidently as sweet as ever on his cousin, in spite of the reception