“Be generous first, and just afterwards. That’s it;—isn’t it, Lizzie? But indeed, under no circumstances could I take a penny of your money. There are some persons from whom a man can borrow, and some from whom he cannot. You are clearly one of those from whom I cannot borrow.”
“Why not?”
“Ah—one can’t explain these things. It simply is so. Mrs. Carbuncle was quite the natural person to borrow your money, and it seems that she has complied with nature. Some Jew who wants thirty percent is the natural person for me. All these things are arranged, and it is of no use disturbing the arrangements and getting out of course. I shall pull through. And now let me know your own news.”
“The police have taken Patience.”
“They have—have they? Then at last we shall know all about the diamonds.” This was gall to poor Lizzie. “Where did they get her?”
“Ah!—I don’t know that.”
“And who told you?”
“A policeman came here last night and said so. She is going to turn against the thieves, and tell all that she knows. Nasty, mean creature.”
“Thieves are nasty, mean creatures generally. We shall get it all out now—as to what happened at Carlisle and what happened here. Do you know that everybody believes, up to this moment, that your dear friend Lord George de Bruce sold the diamonds to Mr. Benjamin, the jeweller?”
Lizzie could only shrug her shoulders. She herself, among many doubts, was upon the whole disposed to think as everybody thought. She did believe—as far as she believed anything in the matter, that the Corsair had determined to become possessed of the prize from the moment that he saw it in Scotland, that the Corsair arranged the robbery in Carlisle, and that again he arranged the robbery in the London house as soon as he learned from Lizzie where the diamonds were placed. To her mind this had been the most ready solution of the mystery, and when she found that other people almost regarded him as the thief, her doubts became a belief. And she did not in the least despise or dislike him or condemn him for what he had done. Were he to come to her and confess it all, telling his story in such a manner as to make her seem to be safe for the future, she would congratulate him and accept him at once as her own dear, expected Corsair. But, if so, he should not have bungled the thing. He should have managed his subordinates better than to have one of them turn evidence against him. He should have been able to get rid of a poor weak female like Patience Crabstick. Why had he not sent her to New York, or—or—or anywhere? If Lizzie were to hear that Lord George had taken Patience out to sea in a yacht—somewhere among the bright islands of which she thought so much—and dropped the girl overboard, tied up in a bag, she would regard it as a proper Corsair arrangement. Now she was angry with Lord George because her trouble was coming back upon her. Frank had suggested that Lord George was the robber in chief, and Lizzie merely shrugged her shoulders. “We shall know all about it now,” said he triumphantly.
“I don’t know that I want to know any more about it. I have been so tortured about these wretched diamonds, that I never wish to hear them mentioned again. I don’t care who has got them. My enemies used to think that I loved them so well that I could not bear to part with them. I hated them always, and never took any pleasure in them. I used to think that I would throw them into the sea; and when they were gone I was glad of it.”
“Thieves ought to be discovered, Lizzie—for the good of the community.”
“I don’t care for the community. What has the community ever done for me? And now I have something else to tell you. Ever so many people came yesterday as well as that wretched policeman. Dear Lady Glencora was here again.”
“They’ll make a Radical of you among them, Lizzie.”
“I don’t care a bit about that. I’d just as soon be a Radical as a stupid old Conservative. Lady Glencora has been most kind, and she brought me the dearest message from the Duke of Omnium. The duke had heard how ill I had been treated.”
“The duke is doting.”
“It is so easy to say that when a man is old. I don’t think you know him, Frank.”
“Not in the least;—nor do I wish.”
“It is something to have the sympathy of men high placed in the world. And as to Lady Glencora, I do love her dearly. She just comes up to my beau-ideal of what a woman should be—disinterested, full of spirit, affectionate, with a dash of romance about her.”
“A great dash of romance, I fancy.”
“And a determination to be something in the world. Lady Glencora Palliser is something.”
“She is awfully rich, Lizzie.”
“I suppose so. At any rate, that is no disgrace. And then, Frank, somebody else came.”
“Lord Fawn was to have come.”
“He did come.”
“And how did it go between you?”
“Ah—that will be so difficult to explain. I wish you had been behind the curtain to hear it all. It is so necessary that you should know, and yet it is so hard to tell. I spoke up to him, and was quite high-spirited.”
“I daresay you were.”
“I told him out, bravely, of all the wrong he had done me. I did not sit and whimper, I can assure you. Then he talked about you—of your attentions.”
Frank Greystock, of course, remembered the scene among the rocks, and Mr. Gowran’s wagging head and watchful eyes. At the time
