Rachel said, “I suppose so,” and then remained silent for quite a long time. Her hands were once more clasped in her lap. She looked down at them, and when she began to speak she did not raise her eyes.

“Miss Silver, I believe that I can trust you. My difficulty is this-I do not see how you can help me unless I am frank with you, unless I tell you everything. But that is the trouble. With the best will in the world, one can’t tell everything. I look at the problem, at the people, and I look at them through my own temperament, my own mood- perhaps through my own fear, my own doubt, my own suspicion. These things do not make for clear vision. And, not seeing clearly myself, I have to choose, I have to select what I am going to tell you, and then I have to find words to convey these troubled impressions to you, a stranger. You have no check on what I tell you. You don’t know the people or the circumstances. Don’t you see how impossible it is to give you anything except an unfair picture?”

“I see that you are very anxious to be fair. Now will you tell me who it is that you suspect?”

Rachel Treherne looked up.

“No one,” she said.

“And who is it that Louisa Barnet suspects?”

Rachel turned abruptly. She faced Miss Silver across the table now.

“No one,” she said-“no one person. She’s afraid for me and it makes her suspicious. It is because of these suspicions that I have felt bound to come to you. I can’t go on like this, living with people, seeing them constantly, being fond of them, and these dreadful suspicions always there between us.”

“I see,” said Miss Silver. “If I may quote from Lord Tennyson’s poem of Maud-‘Villainy somewhere! Whose? One says, we are villains all.’ And again:

‘Why do they prate of the blessings of peace? We have made them a curse.

Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own.

And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse