y were uttered
in the lowest whisper.

"About this d---- necklace. What is it all? Where are they? And how
did you manage it?"

"I didn't manage anything!"

"But you know where they are?" He paused again, still gazing at her.
Gradually there came across his face, or she fancied that it was so,
a look of ferocity which thoroughly frightened her. If he should turn
against her, and be leagued with the police against her, what chance
would she have? "You know where they are," he said, repeating his
words. Then at last she nodded her head, assenting to his assertion.
"And where are they? Come;--out with it! If you won't tell me, you
must tell some one else. There has been a deal too much of this
already."

"You won't betray me?"

"Not if you deal openly with me."

"I will; indeed I will. And it was all an accident. When I took them
out of the box, I only did it for safety."

"You did take them out of the box then?" Again she nodded her head.
"And have got them now?" There was another nod. "And where are they?
Come; with such a spirit of enterprise as yours you ought to be able
to speak. Has Benjamin got them?"

"Oh, no."

"And he knows nothing about them?"

"Nothing."

"Then I have wronged in my thoughts that son of Abraham?"

"Nobody knows anything," said Lizzie.

"Not even Jane or Lucinda?"

"Nothing at all."

"Then you have kept your secret marvellously. And where are they?"

"Up-stairs."

"In your bed-room?"

"In my desk in the little sitting-room."

"The Lord be good to us!" ejaculated Lord George. "All the police in
London, from the chief downwards, are agog about this necklace. Every
well-known thief in the town is envied by every other thief because
he is thought to have had a finger in the pie. I am suspected, and
Mr. Benjamin is suspected; Sir Griffin is suspected, and half the
jewellers in London and Paris are supposed to have the stones in
their keeping. Every man and woman is talking about it, and people
are quarrelling about it till they almost cut each other's throats;
and all the while you have got them locked up in your desk! How on
earth did you get the box broken open and then conveyed out of your
room at Carlisle?"

Then Lizzie, in a frightened whisper, with her eyes often turned on
the floor, told the whole story. "If I'd had a minute to think of
it," she said, "I would have confessed the truth at Carlisle. Why
should I want to steal what was my own? But they came to me all