e realised. Her income was still her own. They
could not touch that. So she thought, at least,--oppressed by some
slight want of assurance in that respect. Were she to go at once to
Scotland, she must for the present give up that game altogether. If
Frank would pledge himself to become her husband in three or four,
or even in six months, she would go at once. She had more confidence
in Frank than even in Lord George. As for love,--she would sometimes
tell herself that she was violently in love; but she hardly knew with
which. Lord George was certainly the best representative of that
perfect Corsair which her dreams had represented to her; but, in
regard to working life, she thought that she liked her cousin Frank
better than she had ever yet liked any other human being. But, in
truth, she was now in that condition, as she acknowledged to herself,
that she was hardly entitled to choose. Lord Fawn had promised to
marry her, and to him as a husband she conceived that she still had a
right. Nothing had as yet been proved against her which could justify
him in repudiating his engagement. She had, no doubt, asserted with
all vehemence to her cousin that no consideration would now induce
her to give her hand to Lord Fawn;--and when making that assurance
she had been, after her nature, sincere. But circumstances were
changed since that. She had not much hope that Lord Fawn might be
made to succumb,--though evidence had reached her before the last
robbery which induced her to believe that he did not consider himself
to be quite secure. In these circumstances she was unwilling to leave
London though she had promised, and was hardly sorry to find an
excuse in her recognised illness.

And she was ill. Though her mind was again at work with schemes on
which she would not have busied herself without hope, yet she had not
recovered from the actual bodily prostration to which she had been
compelled to give way when first told of the robbery on her return
from the theatre. There had been moments then in which she thought
that her heart would have broken,--moments in which, but that the
power of speech was wanting, she would have told everything to
Lucinda Roanoke. When Mrs. Carbuncle was marching up-stairs with the
policemen at her heels she would have willingly sold all her hopes,
Portray Castle, her lovers, her necklace, her income, her beauty,
for any assurance of the humblest security. With that quickness of
intellect which was her