"No; on the contrary, it was my intention to ask you to tell her everything, when we are finished. I hope for help from her; she is an unusually intelligent woman, and besides, women have, in many respects, much finer feelings,—instinct, or what you call it,—than we men."
"Then I have a proposal to make to you. We shall not continue to-night, but I shall tell Clara all that you have now told me. Clara and I will read the newspaper account together, and then we will see you again."
"I gladly accept your proposal," said Monk, a little hesitatingly; "but if I could be allowed, I would ask you both to read the account in the paper in my presence. Of course I have read it, not once, but ten times, to myself, without any result; but now it has struck me that the whole affair might appear to me in a new light, if I heard some one else read an exact account of what happened on that fateful day."
"Yes, with pleasure," I exclaimed. "I promise to do this, both on my own and on Clara's behalf."
Monk shook me by the hand, and asked if Clara and I would come up to him one day, when I had told her all I had heard from him.
"You shall see us here to-morrow," I answered quickly, and so we parted that evening or, more correctly, that night. It was half-past one when I reached my home.
I had had a busy day, and the intense interest with which I had listened to Monk's account had tired me. I only longed to get to sleep as quickly as possible. But then happened what a more experienced man than I might perhaps have foreseen.
When I got home Clara was sitting up waiting for me. So I explained to her, as casually as possible, that next day she should hear Monk's remarkable story,—a story, the continuation of which we were to read together; well—what further happened I cannot remember, but I am sure it was past four that night before I got to sleep, and then Clara had heard everything that the reader knows of Monk's history.
"Pshaw! it isn't difficult to understand how the story will end! The horrid Englishman naturally managed things so that Miss Frick should be suspected of having stolen her uncle's diamond; and—"
These were the last words I heard Clara utter as sleep overcame me. "Yes, if there must be a villain in the drama, Clara must be right in thinking that the Englishman must have played that rôle," I thought with my last efforts, before my senses were entirely bedimmed.