I walked out in the fine summer afternoon, very sorry for the poor girl, and very uneasy in my mind at the turn things had taken.  Drifting towards the shrubbery, some time later, there I met Mr. Franklin.  After returning from seeing his cousin off at the station, he had been with my lady, holding a long conversation with her.  She had told him of Miss Rachel’s unaccountable refusal to let her wardrobe be examined; and had put him in such low spirits about my young lady that he seemed to shrink from speaking on the subject.  The family temper appeared in his face that evening, for the first time in my experience of him.

“Well, Betteredge,” he said, “how does the atmosphere of mystery and suspicion in which we are all living now, agree with you?  Do you remember that morning when I first came here with the Moonstone?  I wish to God we had thrown it into the quicksand!”

After breaking out in that way, he abstained from speaking again until he had composed himself.  We walked silently, side by side, for a minute or two, and then he asked me what had become of Sergeant Cuff.  It was impossible to put Mr. Franklin off with the excuse of the Sergeant being in my room, composing his mind.  I told him exactly what had happened, mentioning particularly what my lady’s maid and the house-maid had said about Rosanna Spearman.

Mr. Franklin’s clear head saw the turn the Sergeant’s suspicions had taken, in the twinkling of an eye.

“Didn’t you tell me this morning,” he said, “that one of the tradespeople declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to Frizinghall, when we supposed her to be ill in her room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If my aunt’s maid and the other woman have spoken the truth, you may depend upon it the tradesman did meet her.  The girl’s attack of illness was a blind to deceive us.  She had some guilty reason for going to the town secretly.  The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and the fire heard crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire lit to destroy it.  Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond.  I’ll go in directly, and tell my aunt the turn things have taken.”

“Not just yet, if you please, sir,” said a melancholy voice behind us.

We both turned about, and found ourselves face to face with Sergeant Cuff.

“Why not just yet?” asked Mr. Franklin.

“Because, sir, if you tell her ladyship, her ladyship will tell Miss Verinder.”

“Suppose she does.  What then?” Mr. Franklin said those words with a sudden heat and vehemence, as if the Sergeant had mortally offended him.

“Do you think it’s wise, sir,” said Sergeant Cuff, quietly, “to put such a question as that to me—­at such a time as this?”

There was a moment’s silence between them:  Mr. Franklin walked close up to the Sergeant.  The two looked each other straight in the face.  Mr. Franklin spoke first, dropping his voice as suddenly as he had raised it.