"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 assertion 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.