for feeling any special
anxiety about the Diamond, at this time last year?"

"I had the strongest reasons for feeling anxiety about the Diamond.
I knew it to be the object of a conspiracy; and I was warned to take
measures for Miss Verinder's protection, as the possessor of the stone."

"Was the safety of the Diamond the subject of conversation between you
and any other person, immediately before you retired to rest on the
birthday night?"

"It was the subject of a conversation between Lady Verinder and her
daughter----"

"Which took place in your hearing?"

"Yes."

Ezra Jennings took up his notes from the table, and placed them in my
hands.

"Mr. Blake," he said, "if you read those notes now, by the light which
my questions and your answers have thrown on them, you will make two
astounding discoveries concerning yourself. You will find--First, that
you entered Miss Verinder's sitting-room and took the Diamond, in a
state of trance, produced by opium. Secondly, 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 sat with the papers in my hand completely stupefied.

"Try and forgive poor Mr. Candy," said the assistant gently. "He has
done dreadful mischief, I own; but he has done it innocently. If you
will look at the notes, you will see that--but for his illness--he would
have returned to Lady Verinder's the morning after the party, and would
have acknowledged the trick that he had played you. Miss Verinder would
have heard of it, and Miss Verinder would have questioned him--and the
truth which has laid hidden for a year would have been discovered in a
day."

I began to regain my self-possession. "Mr. Candy is beyond the reach of
my resentment," I said angrily. "But the trick that he played me is not
the less an act of treachery, for all that. I may forgive, but I shall
not forget it."

"Every medical man commits that act of treachery, Mr. Blake, in the
course of his practice. The ignorant distrust of opium (in England) is
by no means confined to the lower and less cultivated classes. Every
doctor in large practice finds himself, every now and then, obliged
to deceive his patients, as Mr. Candy deceived you. I don't defend the
folly of playing you a trick under the circumstances. I only plead with
you for a more accurate and more merciful construction of motives."

"How was it done