"So it was. They broke into my room in the dead of night, when I was in bed, fast asleep, and took the case away. When the morning came, everybody rushed into my room, and I was so frightened that I did not know what I was doing. How would your daughter bear it, if two men cut away the locks and got into her bedroom when she was asleep? You don't think about that at all."
"And where was the necklace?" asked Eustace.
Lizzie remembered that her friend the major had specially advised her to tell the whole truth to Mr. Camperdown,—suggesting that by doing so she would go far towards saving herself from any prosecution. "It was under my pillow," she whispered.
"And why did you not tell the magistrate that it had been under your pillow?"
Mr. Camperdown's voice, as he put to her this vital question, was severe, and almost justified the little burst of sobs which came forth as a prelude to Lizzie's answer. "I did not know what I was doing. I don't know what you expect from me. You had been persecuting me ever since Sir Florian's death about the diamonds, and I didn't know what I was to do. They were my own, and I thought I was not obliged to tell everybody where I kept them. There are things which nobody tells. If I were to ask you all your secrets, would you tell them? When Sir Walter Scott was asked whether he wrote the novels, he didn't tell."
"He was not upon his oath, Lady Eustace."
"He did take his oath,—ever so many times. I don't know what difference an oath makes. People ain't obliged to tell their secrets, and I wouldn't tell mine."
"The difference is this, Lady Eustace;—that if you give false evidence upon oath, you commit perjury."
"How was I to think of that, when I was so frightened and confused that I didn't know where I was or what I was doing? There;—now I have told you everything."
"Not quite everything. The diamonds were not stolen at Carlisle, but they were stolen afterwards. Did you tell the police what you had lost,—or the magistrate,—after the robbery in Hertford Street?"