The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves — among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be. I don’t complain of this — I only notice it.

I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.

To be held up before my mistress, in my old age, as a sort of deputy-policeman, was, once again, more than my Christianity was strong enough to bear.

Our experience of the Reformatory woman is, that when tried in service — and when kindly and judiciously treated — they prove themselves in the majority of cases to be honestly penitent, and honestly worthy of the pains taken with them.

have done much to make my mother pity me — nothing to make my mother blush for me.” Those are my daughter’s own words.

We shall have more detective-business on our hands, sir, before the Moonstone is many months older.” If those words meant

“you will hear something from the Yollands — when the postman delivers Rosanna’s letter at Cobb’s Hole, on Monday next.”

“you will hear of the three Indians again.

“you will, sooner or later, hear something of that money-lender in London, whom I have twice taken the liberty of mentioning already. Give me your pocket-book, and I’ll

The Moonstone has served the Colonel’s vengeance, Betteredge, by means which the Colonel himself never dreamt of!”

the favourite parliamentary plaything which they call “a private bill.”

“Yes; tell him at the end of the session.”

that one of the dogs showed signs of a breaking out behind the ears. I gave him a dose of syrup of buckthorn, and put him on a diet of pot-liquor and vegetables till further orders. Excuse my mentioning this.

easily be dealt with under the Act.

My nature is weak. It cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.

She is the daughter of a heathen old man named Betteredge — long, too long, tolerated in my aunt’s family.

having always a few tracts in my bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the person who answered the door.

Oh, when shall we wean ourselves from the worship of Mammon!

Verinder had thought it a case for a physician. All my poor aunt’s early life had been passed in her father’s godless household. The natural result again! Oh, dear, dear, the natural result again!

Nothing but Nervous Force — which the law doesn’t recognise as property; so that, strictly speaking, I have lost nothing at all.

I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He received it with an oath;

After what has passed here to-day, between us two, the dead-lock, in this case, is complete. Rachel’s own innocence is (as her mother knows, and as I know) beyond a doubt. Mr. Ablewhite’s innocence is equally certain — or Rachel would never have testified to it. And Franklin Blake’s innocence, as you have just seen, unanswerably asserts itself.

reveal himself to me in a new character, and to become associated in my mind with one of the most awful backslidings of modern times.

I should hear all about the Moonstone.

“Surely,” she said to the lawyer, “this is beneath notice. If he can think in that way, let us leave him to think as he pleases.”

Neither she, nor her husband (if she married), could raise sixpence, either on the property in land, or on the property in money.

I was trusted with the secret of Colonel Herncastle’s plan for escaping assassination.

He might not have respected my life. But he did what none of my own countrymen had ever done, in all my experience of them — he respected my time.

is needless to say that, as soon as the wholesome check exercised by the presence of the ladies was removed, the conversation turned on politics as a necessary result.

he is an eminent philanthropist — which is decidedly against him, to begin with.”

“The Indians take it for granted, as we do, that the Moonstone has been pledged; and they want to be certainly informed of the earliest period at which the pledge can be redeemed — because that will be the earliest period at which the Diamond can be removed from the safe keeping of the bank!”

June, ‘forty-nine. Expect news of the indians, towards the end of the month.

“As I live by bread, sir, here’s the bit I was reading, the moment before you came in! Page one hundred and fifty-six as follows:— ‘I stood like one Thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an Apparition.’ If that isn’t as much as to say: ‘Expect the sudden appearance of Mr. Franklin Blake’ — there’s no meaning in the English

I had discovered Myself as the Thief.

Foul play, sir!”

How can you expect one to like him, after that?”

“There’s a bottom of good sense, Mr. Franklin, in our conduct to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of life. We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world. And we are all of us right.”

“Ezra Jennings.”

Rachel quite as nearly as it concerns you. Her extraordinary conduct is no mystery now. She believes you have stolen

Diamond.” I had shrunk from reasoning my own way fairly to that revolting conclusion. But it had forced itself on me, nevertheless.

on seeing Rachel personally; and twice, having regard to his age and his character, I hesitated to take him by surprise at an unfavourable moment.

“Nothing venture, nothing have,” the old gentleman resumed. “You

The effort of writing a few sentences, in plain English, completely cleared my mind of the cloudy nonsense which had filled it since the previous day.

I was for giving him champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine.

that the opium was given to you by Mr. Candy — without your own knowledge — as a practical refutation of the opinions which you had expressed to him at the birthday dinner.” I

It rests, I am well aware, on a mere assumption.

What is the secret of the attraction that there is for me in this man?

My own happiness has been trampled under foot; my own love has been torn from me. Shall I live to see a happiness of others, which is of my making — a love renewed, which is of my bringing back? Oh merciful Death, let me see it before your arms enfold me, before your voice whispers to me, “Rest at last!”

If it ends in your setting the house on fire, Damme if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first!”

Mrs. Merridew stands in mortal fear of the opinion of the world.