Frank Greystock came to her with great constancy almost every day, and from him she did hear about the robbery all that he knew or heard. When three days had passed,—when six days, and even when ten days were gone, nobody had been as yet arrested. The police, according to Frank, were much on the alert, but were very secret. They either would not, or could not, tell anything. To him the two robberies, that at Carlisle and the last affair in Hertford Street, were of course distinct. There were those who believed that the Hertford Street thieves and the Carlisle thieves were not only the same, but that they had been in quest of the same plunder,—and had at last succeeded. But Frank was not one of these. He never for a moment doubted that the diamonds had been taken at Carlisle, and explained the second robbery by the supposition that Patience Crabstick had been emboldened by success. The iron box had no doubt been taken by her assistance, and her familiarity with the thieves, then established, had led to the second robbery. Lizzie's loss in that second robbery had amounted to some hundred pounds. This was Frank Greystock's theory, and of course it was one very comfortable to Lizzie.
"They all seem to think that the diamonds are at Paris," he said to her one day.
"If you only knew how little I care about them. It seems as though I had almost forgotten them in these after troubles."
"Mr. Camperdown cares about them. I'm told he says that he can make you pay for them out of your jointure."
"That would be very terrible, of course," said Lizzie, to whose mind there was something consolatory in the idea that the whole affair of the robbery might perhaps remain so mysterious as to remove her from the danger of other punishment than this.
"I feel sure that he couldn't do it," said Frank, "and I don't think he'll try it. John Eustace would not let him. It would be persecution."
"Mr. Camperdown has always chosen to persecute me," said Lizzie.
"I can understand that he shouldn't like the loss of the diamonds. I don't think, Lizzie, you ever realised their true value."
"I suppose not. After all, a necklace is only a necklace. I cared nothing for it,—except that I could not bear the idea that that man should dictate to me. I would have given it up at once, at the slightest word from you." He did not care to remind her then, as she lay in bed, that he had been very urgent in his advice to her to abandon the diamonds,—and not the less urgent because he had thought that the demand for them was unjust. "I told you often," she continued, "that I was tempted to throw them among the waves. It was true;—quite true. I offered to give them to you, and should have been delighted to have been relieved from them."
"That was, of course, simply impossible."