e necessary for him to go down to
Bobsborough;--but in the meantime he would see Frank Greystock.
Greystock was as bitter a Tory as any in England. Greystock was the
very man who had attacked him, Lord Fawn, in the House of Commons
respecting the Sawab,--making the attack quite personal,--and that
without a shadow of a cause! Within the short straight grooves of
Lord Fawn's intellect the remembrance of this supposed wrong was
always running up and down, renewing its own soreness. He regarded
Greystock as an enemy who would lose no opportunity of injuring him.
In his weakness and littleness he was quite unable to judge of other
men by himself. He would not go a hair's breadth astray, if he knew
it; but because Greystock had, in debate, called him timid and
tyrannical, he believed that Greystock would stop short of nothing
that might injure him. And yet he must appeal to Greystock. He did
appeal, and in answer to his appeal Frank came to him at the India
House. But Frank, before he saw Lord Fawn, had, as was fitting, been
with his cousin.

Nothing was decided at this interview. Lord Fawn became more than
ever convinced that the member for Bobsborough was his determined
enemy, and Frank was more convinced than ever that Lord Fawn was an
empty, stiff-necked, self-sufficient prig.

Greystock, of course, took his cousin's part. He was there to do so;
and he himself really did not know whether Lizzie was or was not
entitled to the diamonds. The lie which she had first fabricated for
the benefit of Mr. Benjamin when she had the jewels valued, and which
she had since told with different degrees of precision to various
people,--to Lady Linlithgow, to Mr. Camperdown, to Lucy, and to Lord
Fawn,--she now repeated with increased precision to her cousin. Sir
Florian, in putting the trinket into her hands, had explained to her
that it was very valuable, and that she was to regard it as her own
peculiar property. "If it was an heirloom he couldn't do it," Frank
had said, with all the confidence of a practising barrister.

"He made it over as an heirloom to me," said Lizzie, with plaintive
tenderness.

"That's nonsense, dear Lizzie." Then she smiled sweetly on him, and
patted the back of his hand with hers. She was very gentle with him,
and bore his assumed superiority with pretty meekness. "He could not
make it over as an heirloom to you. If it was his to give, he could
give it you."

"It was his,--certainly."

"That is just wh