The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle.

Moral of the three jugglers

Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can’t forget politics, horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club. I

Miss Rachel’s birthday,

seemed to strike Mr. Franklin like a shot that had hit the mark. Though

I see three very serious questions involved in the Colonel’s birthday-gift to my cousin Rachel.

I wanted a whiff of my pipe, and a turn at Robinson Crusoe.

I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort; and they consequently muddled it all, until Mr. Franklin took them in hand, and pointed out what they ought to see.

It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don’t understand.

But compare the hardest day’s work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders’ stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it must think of, and your hands something that they must do.

“vehicle.”

surface

the one, I mean, who stocked the world with Virgin Maries, and had a sweetheart at the baker’s.

like the decoration of the door, has its bearing on something that is still to come.

clear voice, with a ring of the right metal in it,

She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this — that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn’t suit her views.

Over and over again I have heard my lady say, “Rachel’s best friend and Rachel’s worst enemy are, one and the other — Rachel herself.”

If your good lady doesn’t exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you! — you have married a monster.

The lady did it, with a band of music. The gentleman did it, with a handkerchief and a glass of water.

Bouncers — that’s what I call them.

family frown gathering over her eyes, and the family temper twitching at the corners of her mouth.

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?

Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.

My lady, listening with rather a careworn expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel zealous enough in the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.

celebrated Indian traveller, Mr. Murthwaite,

“If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?” — what do you say to Mr. Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view: “We have got three things left, sir — Love, Music, and Salad”?

“The Indians won’t risk coming back to-night,” he said. “The direct way is hardly ever the way they take to anything — let alone a matter like this, in which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reaching their end.”

“Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about.” The man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe, after that, is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit!

If we could only hold on for another hour, old Father Time would bring up their carriages, and relieve us of them altogether.

The next thing to tell is the story of the night.

— it would have been privately a relief to her to let the thieves get off with the Moonstone scot free.

We had our breakfasts — whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn’t matter, you must have your breakfast.

misfortune that had happened to us. Ought he to relieve the family, in their present situation, of the responsibility of him as a guest, or ought he to stay on the chance that even his humble services might be of some use?

The cursed Moonstone had turned us all upside down.

Many men, many opinions, as one of the ancients said, before my time.

But when you are old, you acquire one excellent habit. In cases where you don’t see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.

you had seen something there was no doubt about. And that, let me tell you, was becoming a treat of the rarest kind in our household.

This was a nice sort of man to recover Miss Rachel’s Diamond, and to find out the thief who stole it!

the nature of a man’s tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business.

I began to think him rather a quicker man than he appeared to be at first sight.

A kind of cold shudder ran through me, which I couldn’t account for at the time. I know, now, that I must have got my first suspicion, at that moment, of a new light (and horrid light) having suddenly fallen on the case, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff — purely and entirely in consequence of what he had seen in Miss Rachel,

“There is also such a thing as making nothing out of a molehill, in consequence of your head being too high to see it.”

“Nobody has stolen the diamond,” answered Sergeant Cuff.

This was the first attack of the megrims that I remembered in my mistress since the time when she was a young girl.

I like to be tender to human infirmity

nota bene,

wasting lamp.)

“But for her self-control, the mystery that puzzles you, Mr. Betteredge, would have been at an end to-night.”

it is a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women — if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn’t matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn’t their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it’s the fault of the fools who humour them.

Your young lady has got a travelling companion in her mother’s carriage, Mr. Betteredge — and the name of it is, the Moonstone.”