is!’ You spoke civilly (I can’t deny that); but still you kept a distance—­a cruel distance between us.  Believing, as I did, that you had got the lost Diamond hidden about you, while you were speaking, your coolness so provoked me that I got bold enough, in the heat of the moment, to give you a hint.  I said, ’They will never find the Diamond, sir, will they?  No! nor the person who took it—­I’ll answer for that.’  I nodded, and smiled at you, as much as to say, ’I know!’ This time, you looked up at me with something like interest in your eyes; and I felt that a few more words on your side and mine might bring out the truth.  Just at that moment, Mr. Betteredge spoilt it all by coming to the door.  I knew his footstep, and I also knew that it was against his rules for me to be in the library at that time of day—­let alone being there along with you.  I had only just time to get out of my own accord, before he could come in and tell me to go.  I was angry and disappointed; but I was not entirely without hope for all that.  The ice, you see, was broken between us—­and I thought I would take care, on the next occasion, that Mr. Betteredge was out of the way.

“When I got back to the servants’ hall, the bell was going for our dinner.  Afternoon already! and the materials for making the new nightgown were still to be got!  There was but one chance of getting them.  I shammed ill at dinner; and so secured the whole of the interval from then till tea-time to my own use.

“What I was about, while the household believed me to be lying down in my own room; and how I spent the night, after shamming ill again at tea-time, and having been sent up to bed, there is no need to tell you.  Sergeant Cuff discovered that much, if he discovered nothing more.  And I can guess how.  I was detected (though I kept my veil down) in the draper’s shop at Frizinghall.  There was a glass in front of me, at the counter where I was buying the longcloth; and—­in that glass—­I saw one of the shopmen point to my shoulder and whisper to another.  At night again, when I was secretly at work, locked into my room, I heard the breathing of the women servants who suspected me, outside my door.

“It didn’t matter then; it doesn’t matter now.  On the Friday morning, hours before Sergeant Cuff entered the house, there was the new nightgown—­to make up your number in place of the nightgown that I had got—­made, wrung out, dried, ironed, marked, and folded as the laundry woman folded all the others, safe in your drawer.  There was no fear (if the linen in the house was examined) of the newness of the nightgown betraying me.  All your underclothing had been renewed, when you came to our house—­I suppose on your return home from foreign parts.

“The next thing was the arrival of Sergeant Cuff; and the next great surprise was the announcement of what he thought about the smear on the door.