sembled, there was not one who did not listen anxiously for
news on the subject. As regarded the old duke, it had been found
to be quite a godsend; and from post to post as the facts reached
Matching they were communicated to him. And, indeed, there were some
there who would not wait for the post, but had the news about poor
Lizzie's diamonds down by the wires. The matter was of the greatest
moment to Lord Fawn, and Lady Glencora was, perhaps, justified,
on his behalf, in demanding a preference for her affairs over the
messages which were continually passing between Matching and the
Treasury respecting those two ill-conditioned farthings.

"Duke," she said, entering rather abruptly the small, warm, luxurious
room in which her husband's uncle was passing his morning, "duke,
they say now that after all the diamonds were not in the box when it
was taken out of the room at Carlisle." The duke was reclining in an
easy-chair, with his head leaning forward on his breast, and Madame
Goesler was reading to him. It was now three o'clock, and the old
man had been brought down to this room after his breakfast. Madame
Goesler was reading the last famous new novel, and the duke was
dozing. That, probably, was the fault neither of the reader nor of
the novelist, as the duke was wont to doze in these days. But Lady
Glencora's tidings awakened him completely. She had the telegram in
her hand,--so that he could perceive that the very latest news was
brought to him.

"The diamonds not in the box!" he said,--pushing his head a little
more forward in his eagerness, and sitting with the extended fingers
of his two hands touching each other.

"Barrington Erle says that Major Mackintosh is almost sure the
diamonds were not there." Major Mackintosh was an officer very
high in the police force, whom everybody trusted implicitly, and
as to whom the outward world believed that he could discover the
perpetrators of any iniquity, if he would only take the trouble
to look into it. Such was the pressing nature of his duties that
he found himself compelled in one way or another to give up about
sixteen hours a day to them;--but the outer world accused him of
idleness. There was nothing he couldn't find out;--only he would not
give himself the trouble to find out all the things that happened.
Two or three newspapers had already been very hard upon him in regard
to the Eustace diamonds. Such a mystery as that, they said, he ought
to have unravelled l