en five-and-twenty again!

"I have no claim, my lady," says the Sergeant, "to control Miss
Verinder's actions. All I can ask you to do is to put off her departure,
if possible, till later in the day. I must go to Frizinghall myself
to-morrow morning--and I shall be back by two o'clock, if not before. If
Miss Verinder can be kept here till that time, I should wish to say two
words to her--unexpectedly--before she goes."

My lady directed me to give the coachman her orders, that the carriage
was not to come for Miss Rachel until two o'clock. "Have you more to
say?" she asked of the Sergeant, when this had been done.

"Only one thing, your ladyship. If Miss Verinder is surprised at this
change in the arrangements, please not to mention Me as being the cause
of putting off her journey."

My mistress lifted her head suddenly from her book as if she was going
to say something--checked herself by a great effort--and, looking back
again at the open page, dismissed us with a sign of her hand.

"That's a wonderful woman," said Sergeant Cuff, when we were out in the
hall again. "But for her self-control, the mystery that puzzles you, Mr.
Betteredge, would have been at an end to-night."

At those words, the truth rushed at last into my stupid old head. For
the moment, I suppose I must have gone clean out of my senses. I seized
the Sergeant by the collar of his coat, and pinned him against the wall.

"Damn you!" I cried out, "there's something wrong about Miss Rachel--and
you have been hiding it from me all this time!"

Sergeant Cuff looked up at me--flat against the wall--without stirring a
hand, or moving a muscle of his melancholy face.

"Ah," he said, "you've guessed it at last."

My hand dropped from his collar, and my head sunk on my breast. Please
to remember, as some excuse for my breaking out as I did, that I had
served the family for fifty years. Miss Rachel had climbed upon my
knees, and pulled my whiskers, many and many a time when she was a
child. Miss Rachel, with all her faults, had been, to my mind, the
dearest and prettiest and best young mistress that ever an old servant
waited on, and loved. I begged Sergeant's Cuff's pardon, but I am afraid
I did it with watery eyes, and not in a very becoming way.

"Don't distress yourself, Mr. Betteredge," says the Sergeant, with more
kindness than I had any right to expect from him. "In my line of life
if we were quick at taking offence, we shouldn't be worth salt t