s gone too, as she was rejoiced to find. She perceived
at once that had the money been left,--the very leaving of it would
have gone to prove that other prize had been there. But the money was
gone,--money of which she had given a correct account;--and she could
now honestly allege that she had been robbed. But she had at last
really lost her great treasure;--and if the treasure should be found,
then would she infallibly be exposed. She had talked twice of giving
away her necklace, and had seriously thought of getting rid of it by
burying it deep in the sea. But now that it was in very truth gone
from her, the loss of it was horrible to her. Ten thousand pounds,
for which she had struggled so much and borne so many things, which
had come to be the prevailing fact of her life, gone from her for
ever! Nevertheless it was not that sorrow, that regret, which had
so nearly overpowered her in the dining-parlour. At that moment she
hardly knew, had hardly thought, whether the diamonds had or had
not been taken. But the feeling came upon her at once that her own
disgrace was every hour being brought nearer to her. Her secret was
no longer quite her own. One man knew it, and he had talked to her of
perjury and of five years' imprisonment. Patience must have known it,
too; and now some one else also knew it. The police, of course, would
find it out, and then horrid words would be used against her. She
hardly knew what perjury was. It sounded like forgery and burglary.
To stand up before a judge and be tried,--and then to be locked up
for five years in prison--! What an end would this be to all her
glorious success? And what evil had she done to merit all this
terrible punishment? When they came to her in her bedroom at Carlisle
she had simply been too much frightened to tell them all that the
necklace was at that moment under her pillow.

She tried to think of it all, and to form some idea in her mind of
what might be the truth. Of course, Patience Crabstick had known her
secret, but how long had the girl known it? And how had the girl
discovered it? She was almost certain, from certain circumstances,
from words which the girl had spoken, and from signs which she had
observed, that Patience had not even suspected that the necklace had
been brought with them from Carlisle to London. Of course, the coming
of Bunfit and the woman would have set the girl's mind to work in
that direction; but then Bunfit and the woman had only been th