第28章

I can't say I was at all alarmed; for I recognized in the screams the favourite large O of the Miss Ablewhites.However, I went in (on pretence of asking for instructions about the dinner) to discover whether anything serious had really happened.

There stood Miss Rachel at the table, like a person fascinated, with the Colonel's unlucky Diamond in her hand.There, on either side of her, knelt the two Bouncers, devouring the jewel with their eyes, and screaming with ecstasy every time it flashed on them in a new light.There, at the opposite side of the table, stood Mr.Godfrey, clapping his hands like a large child, and singing out softly, `Exquisite! exquisite!' There sat Mr.Franklin in a chair by the bookcase, tugging at his beard, and looking anxiously towards the window.And there, at the window, stood the object he was contemplating--my lady, having the extract from the Colonel's Will in her hand, and keeping her back turned on the whole of the company.

She faced me, when I asked for my instructions; and I saw the family frown gathering over her eyes, and the family temper twitching at the corners of her mouth.

`Come to my room in half an hour,' she answered.`I shall have something to say to you then.'

With those words she went out.It was plain enough that she was posed by the same difficulty which had posed Mr.Franklin and me in our conference at the Shivering Sand.Was the legacy of the Moonstone a proof that she had treated her brother with cruel injustice? or was it a proof that he was worse than the worst she had ever thought of him? Serious questions those for my lady to determine, while her daughter, innocent of all knowledge of the Colonel's character, stood there with the Colonel's birthday gift in her hand.

Before I could leave the room in my turn, Miss Rachel, always considerate to the old servant who had been in the house when she was born, stopped me.`Look, Gabriel!' she said, and flashed the jewel before my eyes in a ray of sunlight that poured through the window.

Lord bless us! it was a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover's egg! The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon.When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else.It seemed unfathomable;this jewel, that you could hold between you finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves.We set it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark.No wonder Miss Rachel was fascinated:

no wonder her cousins screamed.The Diamond laid such a hold on me that I burst out with as large an `O' as the Bouncers themselves.The only one of us who kept his senses was Mr.Godfrey.He put an arm round each of his sisters' waists, and, looking compassionately backwards and forwards between the Diamond and me, said, `Carbon, Betteredge! mere carbon, my good friend, after all!'

His object, I suppose, was to instruct me.All he did, however, was to remind me of the dinner.I hobbled off to my army of waiters downstairs.

As I went out, Mr.Godfrey said, `Dear old Betteredge, I have the truest regard for him!' He was embracing his sisters, and ogling Miss Rachel, while he honoured me with that testimony of affection.Something like a stock of love to draw on there ! Mr.Franklin was a perfect savage by comparison with him.

At the end of half an hour, I presented myself, as directed, in my lady's room.

What passed between my mistress and me, on this occasion, was, in the main, a repetition of what had passed between Mr.Franklin and me at the Shivering Sand--with this difference, that I took care to keep my own counsel about the jugglers, seeing that nothing had happened to justify me in alarming my lady on this head.When I received my dismissal, I could see that she took the blackest view possible of the Colonel's motives, and that she was bent on getting the Moonstone out of her daughter's possession at the first opportunity.