"
"Dear, dear, dear!" said the duke. "And the diamonds never turned up after
all. I think that was a pity, because I knew the late man's father very
well. We used to be together a good deal at one time. He had a fine
property, and we used to live--but I can't just tell you how we used to
live. He, he, he!"
"You had better tell us nothing about it, duke," said Madame Max.
The affairs of our heroine were again discussed that evening, in another
part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr.
Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been
brought to bear against the sinners who between them had succeeded in
making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion
to such a plot," he said. "It always happens that they catch the small fry
and let the large fish escape."
"Whom did you specially want to catch?" asked Lady Glencora.
"Lady Eustace and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, as he calls himself."
"I quite agree with you, Mr. Bonteen, that it would be very nice to send
the brother of a marquis to Botany Bay or wherever they go now; and that
it would do a deal of good to have the widow of a baronet locked up in the
Penitentiary; but you see if they didn't happen to be guilty it would be
almost a shame to punish them for the sake of the example.
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