“Hadn’t you better say she’s mad enough to be an ugly girl and only a servant?” he asked.  “The falling in love with a gentleman of Mr. Franklin Blake’s manners and appearance doesn’t seem to me to be the maddest part of her conduct by any means.  However, I’m glad the thing is cleared up:  it relieves one’s mind to have things cleared up.  Yes, I’ll keep it a secret, Mr. Betteredge.  I like to be tender to human infirmity—­though I don’t get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life.  You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn’t got a suspicion of the girl’s fancy for him?  Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking.  The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world; let’s hope it will be made up to them in another.  You have got a nice garden here, and a well-kept lawn.  See for yourself how much better the flowers look with grass about them instead of gravel.  No, thank you.  I won’t take a rose.  It goes to my heart to break them off the stem.  Just as it goes to your heart, you know, when there’s something wrong in the servants’ hall.  Did you notice anything you couldn’t account for in any of the servants when the loss of the Diamond was first found out?”

I had got on very fairly well with Sergeant Cuff so far.  But the slyness with which he slipped in that last question put me on my guard.  In plain English, I didn’t at all relish the notion of helping his inquiries, when those inquiries took him (in the capacity of snake in the grass) among my fellow-servants.

“I noticed nothing,” I said, “except that we all lost our heads together, myself included.”

“Oh,” says the Sergeant, “that’s all you have to tell me, is it?”

I answered, with (as I flattered myself) an unmoved countenance, “That is all.”

Sergeant Cuff’s dismal eyes looked me hard in the face.

“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “have you any objection to oblige me by shaking hands?  I have taken an extraordinary liking to you.”

(Why he should have chosen the exact moment when I was deceiving him to give me that proof of his good opinion, is beyond all comprehension!  I felt a little proud—­I really did feel a little proud of having been one too many at last for the celebrated Cuff!)

We went back to the house; the Sergeant requesting that I would give him a room to himself, and then send in the servants (the indoor servants only), one after another, in the order of their rank, from first to last.

I showed Sergeant Cuff into my own room, and then called the servants together in the hall.  Rosanna Spearman appeared among them, much as usual.  She was as quick in her way as the Sergeant in his, and I suspect she had heard what he said to me about the servants in general, just before he discovered her.  There she was, at any rate, looking as if she had never heard of such a place as the shrubbery in her life.