"Barrington says that the best spec he knows out, for a younger son, would be to go to Prague for the former wife, and bring her back with evidence of the marriage. The poor little woman could not fail of being grateful to the hero who would liberate her."
"Dear, dear, dear!" said the duke. "And the diamonds never turned up after all. I think that was a pity, because I knew the late man's father very well. We used to be together a good deal at one time. He had a fine property, and we used to live—but I can't just tell you how we used to live. He, he, he!"
"You had better tell us nothing about it, duke," said Madame Max.
The affairs of our heroine were again discussed that evening in another part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," he said. "It always happens that they catch the small fry, and let the large fish escape."
"Whom did you specially want to catch?" asked Lady Glencora.
"Lady Eustace, and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers,—as he calls himself."
"I quite agree with you, Mr. Bonteen, that it would be very nice to send the brother of a marquis to Botany Bay, or wherever they go now; and that it would do a deal of good to have the widow of a baronet locked up in the Penitentiary; but you see, if they didn't happen to be guilty, it would be almost a shame to punish them for the sake of the example."
"They ought to have been guilty," said Barrington Erle.
"They were guilty," protested Mr. Bonteen.
Mr. Palliser was enjoying ten minutes of recreation before he went back to his letters. "I can't say that I attended to the case very closely," he observed, "and perhaps, therefore, I am not entitled to speak about it."