Diamonds truly stolen in robbery at Mrs. Carbuncle's residence, in which Lizzie's maid Patience Crabstick is implicated.
Woven with story of diamonds is droll account of Plantagenet Palliser's titanic struggle to pass a bill in Parliament for the five farthing penny -- to move British coinage to a decimal system.
Glencora takes Lizzie's part and helps engineer social pressure on Lord Fawn to make good his commitment.
Wisdom from the thief Billie Cann: "pleasures should never be made necessities."
Billy Cann opines to Detective Gager on the police profession: "You guess. You're always a-guessing. And because you know how to guess, they pays you for guessing. But guessing ain't knowing."
The highly practical (and vulgar) Mrs. Hittaway explains to her mother Lady Fawn that her beliefs in virtue, constancy, and honesty are "antedeluvian."
Mrs. Hittaway arranges for the groundskeeper at Portray Castle to testify to Lord Fawn of Lizzie's indiscretions with Frank. But Fawn cannot bear to ask the questions required to extract the story. "He was weak and foolish and, in many respects, ignorant, -- but he was a gentleman.
Deserted by Frank, the "good as gold" Lucy looks in the mirror to view her plain clothes and admits she has been "utterly ignorant of her own value." Lucy realizes her love for Frank has been a "luxury."
Lizzie's great skills as an actress: " In the ordinary scenes of ordinary life she could not acquit herself well. There was no reality about her, and the want of it was strangely plain to most unobservant eyes. But give her a part to play that required exaggerated strong action, and she hardly ever failed."
In her confrontation with Fawn, Lizzie boldly invokes the interest in her case of the Duke of Omnium. Fawn reflects on this: "he knew that the Duke of Omnium was a worn-out old debauchee, with one foot in the grave, who was looked after by two or three women who were only anxious that he should not disgrace himself by some absurdity before he dies. Nevertheless, the Duke of Omnium, or the Duke's name, was a power in the nation."
Ironically, the loss of the diamonds has been a boon to Lizzie's fortunes and status. Learning that Patience Crabstick has been apprehended, Lizzie again worries that her duplicity will be revealed.
Frank confesses his insolvency to the sympathetic Mrs. Carbuncle: "the fact is I live in that detestable no-man's land between respectability and insolvency, which has none of the pleasures of either . . . I have all the recklessness, but none of the carelessness, of the hopelessly insolvent man."
Lizzie contemplates the renewal of her engagement to Lord Fawn with an incredulous Frank: "A woman can marry without consulting her heart. Women do so every day. The man is a Lord, and has a position."
Frank defends Lucy to Lizzie as "perfect." To which Lizzie responds acidly "can you marry this perfection without a sixpence?"
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