"I know that, Lady Fawn."

"When your time here is over, just put up your things and come back to Richmond. You need fear nothing with us. Frederic quite liked your way of parting with him at last, and all that little affair is forgotten. At Fawn Court you'll be safe;--and you shall be happy, too, if we can make you happy. It's the proper place for you."

"Of course you'll come," said Diana Fawn.

"You'll be the worst little thing in the world if you don't," said Lydia. "We don't know what to do without you. Do we, mamma?"

"Lucy will please us all by coming back to her old home," said Lady Fawn. The tears were now streaming down Lucy's face, so that she was hardly able to say a word in answer to all this kindness. And she did not know what word to say. Were she to accept the offer made to her, and acknowledge that she could do nothing better than creep back under her old friend's wing,--would she not thereby be showing that she doubted her lover? And yet she could not go to the dean's house unless the dean and his wife were pleased to take her; and, suspecting as she did, that they would not be pleased, would it become her to throw upon her lover the burthen of finding for her a home with people who did not want her? Had she been welcome at Bobsborough, Mrs. Greystock would surely have so told her before this. "You needn't say a word, my dear," said Lady Fawn. "You'll come, and there's an end of it."

"But you don't want me any more," said Lucy, from amidst her sobs.

"That's just all that you know about it," said Lydia. "We do want you,--more than anything."

"I wonder whether I may come in now," said Lady Linlithgow, entering the room. As it was the countess's own drawing-room, as it was now mid-winter, and as the fire in the dining-room had been allowed, as was usual, to sink almost to two hot coals, the request was not unreasonable. Lady Fawn was profuse in her thanks, and immediately began to account for Lucy's tears, pleading their dear friendship and their long absence, and poor Lucy's emotional state of mind. Then she took her leave, and Lucy, as soon as she had been kissed by her friends outside the drawing-room door, took herself to her bedroom, and finished her tears in the cold.

"Have you heard the news?" said Lady Linlithgow to her companion about a month after this. Lady Linlithgow had been out, and asked the question immediately on her return. Lucy, of course, had heard no news. "Lizzie Eustace has just come back to London, and has had all her jewels stolen on the road."

"The diamonds?" asked Lucy, with amaze.

"Yes,--the Eustace diamonds! And they didn't belong to her any more than they did to you. They've been taken, anyway; and from what I hear I shouldn't be at all surprised if she had arranged the whole matter herself."

"Arranged that they should be stolen?"

"Just that, my dear. It would be the very thing for Lizzie Eustace to do. She's clever enough for anything."

"But, Lady Linlithgow--"

"I know all about that. Of course, it would be very wicked, and if it were found out she'd be put in the dock and tried for her life.

It is just what I expect she'll come to some of these days. She has gone and got up a friendship with some disreputable people, and was travelling with them. There was a man who calls himself Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. I know him, and can remember when he was errand-boy to a disreputable lawyer at Aberdeen." This a.s.sertion was a falsehood on the part of the countess; Lord George had never been an errand-boy, and the Aberdeen lawyer,--as provincial Scotch lawyers go,--had been by no means disreputable. "I'm told that the police think that he has got them."

"How very dreadful!"

"Yes;--it's dreadful enough. At any rate, men got into Lizzie's room at night and took away the iron box and diamonds and all. It may be she was asleep at the time;--but she's one of those who pretty nearly always sleep with one eye open."

"She can't be so bad as that, Lady Linlithgow."

"Perhaps not. We shall see. They had just begun a lawsuit about the diamonds,--to get them back. And then all at once,--they're stolen.

It looks what the men call--fishy. I'm told that all the police in London are up about it."

On the very next day who should come to Brook Street, but Lizzie Eustace herself. She and her aunt had quarrelled, and they hated each other;--but the old woman had called upon Lizzie, advising her, as the reader will perhaps remember, to give up the diamonds, and now Lizzie returned the visit. "So you're here, installed in poor Macnulty's place," began Lizzie to her old friend, the countess at the moment being out of the room.

"I am staying with your aunt for a few months,--as her companion. Is it true, Lizzie, that all your diamonds have been stolen?" Lizzie gave an account of the robbery, true in every respect, except in regard to the contents of the box. Poor Lizzie had been wronged in that matter by the countess, for the robbery had been quite genuine.

The man had opened her room and taken her box, and she had slept through it all. And then the broken box had been found, and was in the hands of the police, and was evidence of the fact.

"People seem to think it possible," said Lizzie, "that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer arranged it all." As this suggestion was being made Lady Linlithgow came in, and then Lizzie repeated the whole story of the robbery. Though the aunt and niece were open and declared enemies, the present circ.u.mstances were so peculiar and full of interest that conversation, for a time almost amicable, took place between them.

"As the diamonds were so valuable, I thought it right, Aunt Susanna, to come and tell you myself."

"It's very good of you, but I'd heard it already. I was telling Miss Morris yesterday what very odd things there are being said about it."

"Weren't you very much frightened?" asked Lucy.

"You see, my child, I knew nothing about it till it was all over. The man cut the bit out of the door in the most beautiful way, without my ever hearing the least sound of the saw."

"And you that sleep so light," said the countess.

"They say that perhaps something was put into the wine at dinner to make me sleep."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the countess, who did not for a moment give up her own erroneous suspicion;--"very likely."

"And they do say these people can do things without making the slightest t.i.ttle of noise. At any rate, the box was gone."

"And the diamonds?" asked Lucy.

"Oh yes;--of course. And now there is such a fuss about it! The police keep on coming to me almost every day."

"And what do the police think?" asked Lady Linlithgow. "I'm told that they have their suspicions."

"No doubt they have their suspicions," said Lizzie.

"You travelled up with friends, I suppose."

"Oh yes,--with Lord George de Bruce Carruthers; and with Mrs.

Carbuncle,--who is my particular friend, and with Lucinda Roanoke, who is just going to be married to Sir Griffin Tewett. We were quite a large party."

"And Macnulty?"

"No. I left Miss Macnulty at Portray with my darling. They thought he had better remain a little longer in Scotland."

"Ah, yes;--perhaps Lord George de Bruce Carruthers does not care for babies. I can easily believe that. I wish Macnulty had been with you."

"Why do you wish that?" said Lizzie, who already was beginning to feel that the countess intended, as usual, to make herself disagreeable.

"She's a stupid, dull, pig-headed creature; but one can believe what she says."

"And don't you believe what I say?" demanded Lizzie.

"It's all true, no doubt, that the diamonds are gone."

"Indeed it is."

"But I don't know much about Lord George de Bruce Carruthers."

"He's the brother of a marquis, anyway," said Lizzie, who thought that she might thus best answer the mother of a Scotch Earl.

"I remember when he was plain George Carruthers, running about the streets of Aberdeen, and it was well with him when his shoes weren't broken at the toes and down at heel. He earned his bread then, such as it was;--n.o.body knows how he gets it now. Why does he call himself de Bruce, I wonder?"

"Because his G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers gave him that name when he was made a child of Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,"

said Lizzie, ever so pertly.