events as they occurred. She wrote,
however, to Miss Macnulty saying that she would come, and she told
Mrs. Carbuncle of her proposed journey as that lady was leaving the
house for the theatre. On the following morning, however, news came
which again made her journey doubtful. There was another paragraph
in the newspaper about the robbery, acknowledging the former
paragraph to have been in some respect erroneous. The "accomplished
housebreaker" had not been arrested. A confederate of the
"accomplished housebreaker" was in the hands of the police, and the
police were on the track of the "accomplished housebreaker" himself.
Then there was a line or two alluding in a very mysterious way to the
disappearance of a certain jeweller. Taking it altogether, Lizzie
thought that there was ground for hope,--and that, at any rate, there
would be delay. She would, perhaps, put off going to Scotland for
yet a day or two. Was it not necessary that she should wait for Lord
Fawn's answer; and would it not be incumbent on her cousin Frank to
send her some account of himself after the abrupt manner in which he
had left her?

If in real truth she should be driven to tell her story to any
one,--and she began to think that she was so driven,--she would tell
it to him. She believed more in his regard for her than that of any
other human being. She thought that he would, in truth, have been
devoted to her, had he not become entangled with that wretched little
governess. And she thought that if he could see his way out of that
scrape, he would marry her even yet,--would marry her, and be good
to her, so that her dream of a poetical phase of life should not
be altogether dissolved. After all, the diamonds were her own. She
had not stolen them. When perplexed in the extreme by magistrates
and policemen, with nobody near her whom she trusted to give her
advice,--for Lizzie now of course declared to herself that she had
never for a moment trusted the Corsair,--she had fallen into an
error, and said what was not true. As she practised it before the
glass, she thought that she could tell her story in a becoming
manner, with becoming tears, to Frank Greystock. And were it not for
Lucy Morris, she thought that he would take her with all her faults
and all her burthens.

As for Lord Fawn, she knew well enough that, let him write what he
would, and renew his engagement in what most formal manner might be
possible, he would be off again when he learned