Having done this, she took out from
under her pillow the little parcel which had been in her desk, and,
untying it, perceived that her dear diamond necklace was perfect, and
quite safe.
The enterprising adventurers had, indeed, stolen the iron case, but they
had stolen nothing else. The reader must not suppose that because Lizzie
had preserved her jewels, she was therefore a consenting party to the
abstraction of the box. The theft had been a genuine theft, planned with
great skill, carried out with much ingenuity, one in the perpetration of
which money had been spent, a theft which for a while baffled the police
of England, and which was supposed to be very creditable to those who had
been engaged in it. But the box, and nothing but the box, had fallen into
the hands of the thieves.
Lizzie's silence when the abstraction of the box was made known to her,
her silence as to the fact that the necklace was at that moment within the
grasp of her own fingers, was not at first the effect of deliberate fraud.
She was ashamed to tell them that she brought the box empty from Portray,
having the diamonds in her own keeping because she had feared that the box
might be stolen.
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