erdown had in his mind no
shadow of a doubt. And, as the reader knows, he was right. She had
stolen them. Mr. Camperdown knew that she had stolen them, and was
a wretched man. From the first moment of the late Sir Florian's
infatuation about this woman, she had worked woe for Mr. Camperdown.
Mr. Camperdown had striven hard,--to the great and almost permanent
offence of Sir Florian,--to save Portray from its present condition
of degradation; but he had striven in vain. Portray belonged to the
harpy for her life; and moreover, he himself had been forced to be
instrumental in paying over to the harpy a large sum of Eustace
money almost immediately on her becoming a widow. Then had come the
affair of the diamonds;--an affair of ten thousand pounds!--as Mr.
Camperdown would exclaim to himself, throwing his eyes up to the
ceiling. And now it seemed that she was to get the better of him even
in that, although there could not be a shadow of doubt as to her
falsehood and fraudulent dishonesty! His luck in the matter was so
bad! John Eustace had no backbone, no spirit, no proper feeling as to
his own family. Lord Fawn was as weak as water, and almost disgraced
the cause by the accident of his adherence to it. Greystock, who
would have been a tower of strength, had turned against him, and was
now prepared to maintain that the harpy was right. Mr. Camperdown
knew that the harpy was wrong,--that she was a harpy, and he would
not abandon the cause; but the difficulties in his way were great,
and the annoyance to which he was subjected was excessive. His
wife and daughters were still at Dawlish, and he was up in town in
September, simply because the harpy had the present possession of
these diamonds.

Mr. Camperdown was a man turned sixty, handsome, grey-haired,
healthy, somewhat florid, and carrying in his face and person
external signs of prosperity and that kind of self-assertion which
prosperity always produces. But they who knew him best were aware
that he did not bear trouble well. In any trouble, such as was
this about the necklace, there would come over his face a look of
weakness which betrayed the want of real inner strength. How many
faces one sees which, in ordinary circumstances, are comfortable,
self-asserting, sufficient, and even bold; the lines of which,
under difficulties, collapse and become mean, spiritless, and
insignificant. There are faces which, in their usual form, seem
to bluster with prosperity, but which