第25章

Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with, he gave up his cigar, because she said, one day, she hated the stale smell of it in his clothes.He slept so badly, after this effort of self-denial, for want of the composing effect of the tobacco to which he was used, and came down morning after morning looking so haggard and worn, that Miss Rachel herself begged him to take to his cigars again.No! he would take to nothing again that could cause her a moment's annoyance; he would fight it out resolutely, and get back his sleep, sooner or later, by main force of patience in waiting for it.Such devotion as this, you may say (as some of them said downstairs), could never fail of producing the right effect on Miss Rachel--backed up, too, as it was, by the decorating work every day on the door.All very well--but she had a photograph of Mr.Godfrey in her bedroom; represented speaking at a public meeting, with all his hair blown out by the breath of his own eloquence, and his eyes, most lovely, charming the money out of your pockets.What do you say to that? Every morning--as Penelope herself owned to me--there was the man whom the women couldn't do without, looking on, in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair combed.He would be looking on, in reality, before long--that was my opinion of it.

June the sixteenth brought an event which made Mr.Franklin's chance look, to my mind, a worse chance than ever.

A strange gentleman, speaking English with a foreign accent, came that morning to the house, and asked to see Mr.Franklin Blake on business.

The business could not possibly have been connected with the Diamond, for these two reasons--first, that Mr.Franklin told me nothing about it; secondly, that he communicated it (when the gentleman had gone, as I suppose) to my lady.She probably hinted something about it next to her daughter.At any rate, Miss Rachel was reported to have said some severe things to Mr.

Franklin, at the piano that evening, about the people he had lived among, and the principles he had adopted in foreign parts.The next day, for the first time, nothing was done towards the decoration of the door.I suspect some imprudence of Mr.Franklin's on the Continent--with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it--had followed him to England.But that is all guesswork.

In this case, not only Mr.Franklin, but my lady too, for a wonder, left me in the dark.

On the seventeenth, to all appearance, the cloud passed away again.