s engaged to marry, on
behalf of the family of her late husband, would not suit him at all.
To have his hands quite clean, to be above all evil report, to be
respectable, as it were, all round, was Lord Fawn's special ambition.
He was a poor man, and a greedy man, but he would have abandoned his
official salary at a moment's notice, rather than there should have
fallen on him a breath of public opinion hinting that it ought to be
abandoned. He was especially timid, and lived in a perpetual fear
lest the newspapers should say something hard of him. In that matter
of the Sawab he had been very wretched, because Frank Greystock had
accused him of being an administrator of tyranny. He would have liked
his wife to have ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds very well;
but he would rather go without a wife for ever,--and without a wife's
fortune,--than marry a woman subject to an action for claiming
diamonds not her own. "I think," said he, at last, "that if you were
to put them into Mr. Camperdown's hands--"

"Into Mr. Camperdown's hands!"

"And then let the matter be settled by arbitration--"

"Arbitration? That means going to law?"

"No, dearest,--that means not going to law. The diamonds would be
entrusted to Mr. Camperdown. And then some one would be appointed to
decide whose property they were."

"They're my property," said Lizzie.

"But he says they belong to the family."

"He'll say anything," said Lizzie.

"My dearest girl, there can't be a more respectable man than Mr.
Camperdown. You must do something of the kind, you know."

"I sha'n't do anything of the kind," said Lizzie. "Sir Florian
Eustace gave them to me, and I shall keep them." She did not look
at her lover as she spoke; but he looked at her, and did not like
the change which he saw on her countenance. And he did not like
the circumstances in which he found himself placed. "Why should Mr.
Camperdown interfere?" continued Lizzie. "If they don't belong to me,
they belong to my son;--and who has so good a right to keep them for
him as I have? But they belong to me."

"They should not be kept in a private house like this at all, if they
are worth all that money."

"If I were to let them go, Mr. Camperdown would get them. There's
nothing he wouldn't do to get them. Oh, Frederic, I hope you'll stand
to me, and not see me injured. Of course I only want them for my
darling child."

Frederic's face had become very long, and he was much disturbed in