I went there on the second day of October. How awful it was! I wore a heavy veil, and gave a fictitious name. Several men looked at the diamonds, and I noticed that they looked at me and whispered together. Finally they told me they would give me four thousand pounds on them, at some interest—I’ve forgotten what it was now—and that they would replace them with paste, so that only an expert could tell the difference. The next day I went back, and they gave me the money. I do not think they had any idea who I was. At any rate, while the papers were full of speculations about the Castlecourt diamonds, they made no sign.
I paid off all my debts, both in Paris and London; I even paid a year’s interest on the diamonds. For a short time I breathed again, and was gay and light-hearted. My husband would never know that I had not paid my bills for five years and had been threatened with a lawsuit. It was delightful to get rid of this fear, and I was quite my old self. I suppose I ought to have felt more guilty; but when one is relieved of a great weight, one’s conscience is not so sensitive as it gets when there is really nothing to be sensitive about.
It was after I had grown accustomed to feeling free and unworried that I began to realize what I had done. I had stolen the diamonds. I was a thief! It did not comfort me much to think that no one might ever find it out; in fact, I do not think it comforted me at all, and I know in the beginning I expected it would. It was what I had done that rankled in me. I felt that I would never be peaceful again till they were redeemed and put back in their old settings. That was what I continually dreamed of. It seemed to me if I could see them once more in their own case I would be happy and care free, as I had been in those first perfect years of my married life.
The fear that at this time most haunted me and was most terrifying was that my husband might discover what I had done. His wife, that he had so loved and trusted, had become a thief! No one who has not gone through it knows how I felt. I did not know any one could suffer so. I went out constantly, to try and forget; and, when things were very cheerful and amusing, I sometimes did. And then I remembered—I was a thief; I had stolen my husband’s diamonds, and, if he ever found it out, what would happen to me?
This was the position I was in when the false diamonds were taken. It was the last thing in the world I had thought could happen. When, that night of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner, I saw the empty case and Jeffers’ terrified face, the world reeled around me. I could not for a moment take it in. Only, in my mind, the diamonds had become a sort of nightmare; anything to do with them was a menace, and I followed an instinct that had possession of me when I tried to hide the empty case from my husband.
Then, when my mind had cleared and I had time to think, I saw that if they recovered the paste necklace they might find out that it was not real, and all would be lost. It was a horrible predicament. I really did not know what I wanted. If the diamonds were found, and seen to be false, it would all come out, and Herbert would know I was a thief. When I thought of this I tried to divert the detectives from hunting for them, and I told that silly, sheepish Mr. Brison that I did not see how he could be so sure they were stolen, that they might have been mislaid. Mr. Brison seemed surprised, and that made me angry, because, after all, a diamond necklace is not the sort of thing that gets mislaid, and I felt I had been foolish and had not gained anything by being so.
The days passed, and nothing was heard of the necklace. I wished desperately now that it would be found. For how, unless it was, could I eventually redeem the real diamonds, and once more feel honest and respectable? If I suddenly appeared with them, how could I explain it? Everybody would say I had stolen them, unless I invented some story about their being lost and then found, and I am not clever at inventing stories. As to where I should get the money to redeem them, I often thought of that; but never could think of any way that sounded possible and reasonable. I have always waited for “things to turn up,” and they generally did; but in this case nothing that I wanted or expected turned up. Besides, four thousand pounds is a good deal of money to come into one’s hands suddenly and unexpectedly. If it were a smaller sum it might, but four thousand pounds was too much. There was nobody to die and leave it to me, and I certainly could not steal it, or make it myself.
So, as one may see, I was beset with troubles on all sides. The season wore itself away, and I was glad to be done with it. For the first time, there had been no pleasure in it. Anxieties that no one guessed were always with me, and always I found myself surreptitiously watching my husband to see if he suspected, to see if he showed any symptoms of growing cold to me and being indifferent. As I drove through the Park in the carriage these dreary thoughts were always at my heart, and it was heavy as lead. I forgot the passers-by who were so amusing, and, with my head hanging, looked into my lap. Suppose Herbert guessed? Suppose Herbert found out? These were the questions that went circling through my brain and never stopped. Sometimes, when Herbert was beside me, I suddenly wanted to cry out:
“Herbert, I took the diamonds! I was the thief! I can’t hide it any more, or live in this uncertainty. All I want to know is, do you hate me and are you going to leave me?”
But I never did it. I looked at Herbert, and was afraid. What would I do if he left me? Go back to Ireland and die.