almost of dismay. An action for the recovery of jewels brought against the
lady whom he was engaged to marry, on behalf of the family of her late
husband, would not suit him at all. To have his hands quite clean, to be
above all evil report, to be respectable, as it were, all round, was Lord
Fawn's special ambition. He was a poor man, and a greedy man, but he would
have abandoned his official salary at a moment's notice, rather than there
should have fallen on him a breath of public opinion hinting that it ought
to be abandoned. He was especially timid, and lived in a perpetual fear
least the newspapers should say something hard of him. In that matter of
the Sawab he had been very wretched, because Frank Greystock had accused
him of being an administrator of tyranny. He would have liked his wife to
have ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds very well; but he would rather
go without a wife forever--and without a wife's fortune--than marry a
woman subject to an action for claiming diamonds not her own. "I think,"
said he at last, "that if you were to put them into Mr. Camperdown's
hands--"

"Into Mr. Camperdown's hands!"

"And then let the matter be settled by arbitration----"

"Arbitration? That means going to law?"

"No, dearest; that means not going to law. The diamonds would be intrusted
to Mr. Camperdown; and then some one would be appointed to decide whose
property they were."

"They're my property," said Lizzie.

"But he says they belong to the family."