ound out she'd be put in the dock and tried for her life.
It is just what I expect she'll come to some of these days. She has
gone and got up a friendship with some disreputable people, and
was travelling with them. There was a man who calls himself Lord
George de Bruce Carruthers. I know him, and can remember when he was
errand-boy to a disreputable lawyer at Aberdeen." This assertion was
a falsehood on the part of the countess; Lord George had never been
an errand-boy, and the Aberdeen lawyer,--as provincial Scotch lawyers
go,--had been by no means disreputable. "I'm told that the police
think that he has got them."

"How very dreadful!"

"Yes;--it's dreadful enough. At any rate, men got into Lizzie's room
at night and took away the iron box and diamonds and all. It may be
she was asleep at the time;--but she's one of those who pretty nearly
always sleep with one eye open."

"She can't be so bad as that, Lady Linlithgow."

"Perhaps not. We shall see. They had just begun a lawsuit about the
diamonds,--to get them back. And then all at once,--they're stolen.
It looks what the men call--fishy. I'm told that all the police in
London are up about it."

On the very next day who should come to Brook Street, but Lizzie
Eustace herself. She and her aunt had quarrelled, and they hated
each other;--but the old woman had called upon Lizzie, advising her,
as the reader will perhaps remember, to give up the diamonds, and
now Lizzie returned the visit. "So you're here, installed in poor
Macnulty's place," began Lizzie to her old friend, the countess at
the moment being out of the room.

"I am staying with your aunt for a few months,--as her companion. Is
it true, Lizzie, that all your diamonds have been stolen?" Lizzie
gave an account of the robbery, true in every respect, except in
regard to the contents of the box. Poor Lizzie had been wronged in
that matter by the countess, for the robbery had been quite genuine.
The man had opened her room and taken her box, and she had slept
through it all. And then the broken box had been found, and was in
the hands of the police, and was evidence of the fact.

"People seem to think it possible," said Lizzie, "that Mr. Camperdown
the lawyer arranged it all." As this suggestion was being made Lady
Linlithgow came in, and then Lizzie repeated the whole story of the
robbery. Though the aunt and niece were open and declared enemies,
the present circumstances were so peculiar and full of i