“Lizzie, you think too hardly of people.”
“And do not people think too hardly of me? Does not all this amount to an accusation against me that I am a thief? Am I not persecuted among them? Did not this impudent attorney stop me in the public street and accuse me of theft before my very servants? Have they not so far succeeded in misrepresenting me, that the very man who is engaged to be my husband betrays me? And now you are turning against me? Can you wonder that I am hard?”
“I am not turning against you.”
“Yes; you are. You take their part, and not mine, in everything. I tell you what, Frank;—I would go out in that boat that you see yonder, and drop the bauble into the sea, did I not know that they’d drag it up again with their devilish ingenuity. If the stones would burn, I would burn them. But the worst of it all is, that you are becoming my enemy!” Then she burst into violent and almost hysteric tears.
“It will be better that you should give them into the keeping of someone whom you can both trust, till the law has decided to whom they belong.”
“I will never give them up. What does Mr. Dove say?”
“I have not seen what Mr. Dove says. It is clear that the necklace is not an heirloom.”
“Then how dare Mr. Camperdown say so often that it was?”
“He said what he thought,” pleaded Frank.
“And he is a lawyer!”
“I am a lawyer, and I did not know what is or what is not an heirloom. But Mr. Dove is clearly of opinion that such a property could not have been given away simply by word of mouth.” John Eustace in his letter had made no allusion to that complicated question of paraphernalia.
“But it was,” said Lizzie. “Who can know but myself, when no one else was present?”
“The jewels are here now?”
“Not in my pocket. I do not carry them about with me. They are in the castle.”
“And will they go back with you to London?”
“Was ever lady so interrogated? I do not know yet that I shall go back to London. Why am I asked such questions? As to you, Frank, I would tell you everything—my whole heart, if only you cared to know it. But why is John Eustace to make inquiry as to personal ornaments which are my own property? If I go to London, I will take them there, and wear them at every house I enter. I will do so in defiance of Mr. Camperdown and Lord Fawn. I think, Frank, that no woman was ever so ill-treated as I am.”
He himself thought that she was ill-treated. She had so pleaded her case, and had been so lovely in her tears and her indignation, that he began to feel something like true sympathy for her cause. What right had he, or had Mr. Camperdown, or anyone, to say that the jewels did not belong to her? And if her claim to them was just, why should she be persuaded to give up the possession of them? He knew well that were she to surrender them with the idea that they should be restored to her if her claim were found to be just, she would not get them back very soon. If once the jewels were safe, locked up in Mr. Garnett’s strong box, Mr. Camperdown would not care how long it might be before a jury or a judge should have decided on the case. The burden of proof would then be thrown upon Lady Eustace. In order that she might recover her own property she would have to thrust herself forward as a witness, and appear before the world a claimant, greedy for rich ornaments. Why should he advise her to give them up? “I am only thinking,” said he, “what may be the best for your own peace.”
“Peace!”—she exclaimed. “How am I to have peace? Remember the condition in which I find myself! Remember the manner in which that man is treating me, when all the world has been told of my engagement to him! When I think of it my heart is so bitter that I am inclined to throw, not the diamonds, but myself from off the rocks. All that remains to me is the triumph of getting the better of my enemies. Mr. Camperdown shall never have the diamonds. Even if they could prove that they did not belong to me, they should find them—gone.”
“I don’t think they can prove it.”
“I’ll flaunt them in the eyes of all of them till they do; and then—they shall be gone. And I’ll have such revenge on Lord Fawn before I have done with him, that he shall know that it may be worse to have to fight a woman than a man. Oh, Frank, I do not think that I am hard by nature, but these things make a woman hard.” As she spoke she took his hand in hers, and looked up into his eyes through her tears. “I know that you do not care for me, and you know how much I care for you.”
“Not care for you, Lizzie?”
“No;—that little thing at Richmond is everything to you. She is tame and quiet—a cat that will sleep on the rug before the fire, and you think that she will never scratch. Do not suppose that I mean to abuse her. She was my dear friend before you had ever seen her. And men, I know, have tastes which we women do not understand. You want what you call—repose.”
“We seldom know what we want, I fancy. We take what the gods send us.” Frank’s words were perhaps more true than wise. At the present moment the gods had clearly sent Lizzie Eustace to him, and unless he could call up some increased strength of his
