There was nothing in these words which made any reply at all needful, on my part—­and yet, I answered them!  It seems hardly credible that I should not have been able to let Mr. Bruff alone, even now.  It seems almost beyond mere mortal perversity that I should have discovered, in what he had just said, a new opportunity of making myself personally disagreeable to him.  But—­ah, my friends! nothing is beyond mortal perversity; and anything is credible when our fallen natures get the better of us!

“Pardon me for intruding on your reflections,” I said to the unsuspecting Mr. Bruff.  “But surely there is a conjecture to make which has not occurred to us yet.”

“Maybe, Miss Clack.  I own I don’t know what it is.”

“Before I was so fortunate, sir, as to convince you of Mr. Ablewhite’s innocence, you mentioned it as one of the reasons for suspecting him, that he was in the house at the time when the Diamond was lost.  Permit me to remind you that Mr. Franklin Blake was also in the house at the time when the Diamond was lost.”

The old worldling left the window, took a chair exactly opposite to mine, and looked at me steadily, with a hard and vicious smile.

“You are not so good a lawyer, Miss Clack,” he remarked in a meditative manner, “as I supposed.  You don’t know how to let well alone.”

“I am afraid I fail to follow you, Mr. Bruff,” I said, modestly.

“It won’t do, Miss Clack—­it really won’t do a second time.  Franklin Blake is a prime favourite of mine, as you are well aware.  But that doesn’t matter.  I’ll adopt your view, on this occasion, before you have time to turn round on me.  You’re quite right, ma’am.  I have suspected Mr. Ablewhite, on grounds which abstractedly justify suspecting Mr. Blake too.  Very good—­let’s suspect them together.  It’s quite in his character, we will say, to be capable of stealing the Moonstone.  The only question is, whether it was his interest to do so.”

“Mr. Franklin Blake’s debts,” I remarked, “are matters of family notoriety.”

“And Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s debts have not arrived at that stage of development yet.  Quite true.  But there happen to be two difficulties in the way of your theory, Miss Clack.  I manage Franklin Blake’s affairs, and I beg to inform you that the vast majority of his creditors (knowing his father to be a rich man) are quite content to charge interest on their debts, and to wait for their money.  There is the first difficulty—­which is tough enough.  You will find the second tougher still.  I have it on the authority of Lady Verinder herself, that her daughter was ready to marry Franklin Blake, before that infernal Indian Diamond disappeared from the house.  She had drawn him on and put him off again, with the coquetry of a young girl.  But she had confessed to her mother that she loved cousin Franklin, and her mother had trusted cousin Franklin with the secret.  So there he was, Miss Clack, with his creditors content to wait, and with the certain prospect before him of marrying an heiress.  By all means consider him a scoundrel; but tell me, if you please, why he should steal the Moonstone?”