"
"Would you object to illustrate your meaning, Mr. Bruff, so that I
may be sure I understand it? Suppose you found Miss Verinder quite
unaccountably interested in what has happened to Mr. Ablewhite and Mr.
Luker? Suppose she asked the strangest questions about this dreadful
scandal, and displayed the most ungovernable agitation when she found
out the turn it was taking?"
"Suppose anything you please, Miss Clack, it wouldn't shake my belief in
Rachel Verinder by a hair's-breadth."
"She is so absolutely to be relied on as that?"
"So absolutely to be relied on as that."
"Then permit me to inform you, Mr. Bruff, that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was
in this house not two hours since, and that his entire innocence of all
concern in the disappearance of the Moonstone was proclaimed by Miss
Verinder herself, in the strongest language I ever heard used by a young
lady in my life."
I enjoyed the triumph--the unholy triumph, I fear I must admit--of
seeing Mr. Bruff utterly confounded and overthrown by a few plain words
from Me. He started to his feet, and stared at me in silence. I kept my
seat, undisturbed, and related the whole scene as it had occurred.
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