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 bed-room; 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.
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