Patience Crabstick,--but there was no friend
whom she could trust. Whatever she did she must do alone! She began
to fear that the load of thought required would be more than she
could bear. One thing, however, was certain to her;--she could not
now venture to tell them all that the necklace was in her possession,
and that the stolen box had been empty.

Thinking of all this, she went to sleep,--still holding the packet
tight between her fingers,--and in this position was awakened at
about ten by a knock at the door from her friend Mrs. Carbuncle.
Lizzie jumped out of bed, and admitted her friend, admitting also
Patience Crabstick. "You had better get up now, dear," said Mrs.
Carbuncle. "We are all going to breakfast." Lizzie declared herself
to be so fluttered, that she must have her breakfast up-stairs. No
one was to wait for her. Crabstick would go down and fetch for her
a cup of tea,--and just a morsel of something to eat. "You can't be
surprised that I shouldn't be quite myself," said Lizzie.

Mrs. Carbuncle's surprise did not run at all in that direction. Both
Mrs. Carbuncle and Lord George had been astonished to find how well
she bore her loss. Lord George gave her credit for real bravery. Mrs.
Carbuncle suggested, in a whisper, that perhaps she regarded the
theft as an easy way out of a lawsuit. "I suppose you know, George,
they would have got it from her." Then Lord George whistled, and, in
another whisper, declared that, if the little adventure had all been
arranged by Lady Eustace herself with the view of getting the better
of Mr. Camperdown, his respect for that lady would be very greatly
raised. "If," said Lord George, "it turns out that she has had a
couple of bravos in her pay, like an old Italian marquis, I shall
think very highly of her indeed." This had occurred before Mrs.
Carbuncle came up to Lizzie's room;--but neither of them for a moment
suspected that the necklace was still within the hotel.

The box had been found, and a portion of the fragments were brought
into the room while the party were still at breakfast. Lizzie was not
in the room, but the news was at once taken up to her by Crabstick,
together with a pheasant's wing and some buttered toast. In a recess
beneath an archway running under the railroad, not distant from the
hotel above a hundred and fifty yards, the iron box had been found.
It had been forced open, so said the sergeant of police, with tools
of the finest steel, peculiarly