The Moonstone

The crimson flush of anger began to fade out of her face, as I went

back, and took my chair in silence. She waited a little, and steadied

herself. When she went on, but one sign of feeling was discernible in

her. She spoke without looking at me. Her hands were fast clasped in her

lap, and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"I ought to have done you the common justice to explain myself," she

said, repeating my own words. "You shall see whether I did try to do

you justice, or not. I told you just now that I never slept, and never

returned to my bed, after you had left my sitting-room. It's useless to

trouble you by dwelling on what I thought--you would not understand my

thoughts--I will only tell you what I did, when time enough had passed

to help me to recover myself. I refrained from alarming the house, and

telling everybody what had happened--as I ought to have done. In spite

of what I had seen, I was fond enough of you to believe--no matter

what!--any impossibility, rather than admit it to my own mind that you

were deliberately a thief. I thought and thought--and I ended in writing

to you."

"I never received the letter."

"I know you never received it. Wait a little, and you shall hear why. My

letter would have told you nothing openly. It would not have ruined you

for life, if it had fallen into some other person's hands. It would

only have said--in a manner which you yourself could not possibly have

mistaken--that I had reason to know you were in debt, and that it was

in my experience and in my mother's experience of you, that you were

not very discreet, or very scrupulous about how you got money when you

wanted it. You would have remembered the visit of the French lawyer, and

you would have known what I referred to. If you had read on with some

interest after that, you would have come to an offer I had to make to

you--the offer, privately (not a word, mind, to be said openly about

it between us!), of the loan of as large a sum of money as I could

get.--And I would have got it!" she exclaimed, her colour beginning

to rise again, and her eyes looking up at me once more. "I would have

pledged the Diamond myself, if I could have got the money in no other

way! In those words I wrote to you. Wait! I did more than that. I

arranged with Penelope to give you the letter when nobody was near. I

planned to shut myself into my bedroom, and to have the sitting-room

left open and empty all the morning. And I hoped--with all my heart and

soul I hoped!--that you would take the opportunity, and put the Diamond

back secretly in the drawer."