She was not sure where to go. Calais was cheap but too close to London. Paris was elegant, but she felt too old to begin a new social life in a strange city. She had heard people talk of a place called Nice, on the Mediterranean coast of France, where a big house and servants could be had for next to nothing, and there was a quiet community of foreigners, many her own age, enjoying the mild winters and the sea air.
But she could not live on nothing a year. She had to have enough for rent and staff wages, and although she was prepared to live frugally she could not manage without a carriage. She had very little cash, no more than fifty pounds. Hence her desperate attempt to buy diamonds. Nine thousand pounds was not really enough, but it might have sufficed for a few years.
She knew she was jeopardizing Hugh's plans. Edward had been right about that. The goodwill of the syndicate depended on the family's being serious about paying off their debts. A family member running off to the Continent with her luggage full of jewelry was just the thing to upset a fragile coalition. In a way, that made the prospect more attractive: she would be happy to trip up the self-righteous Hugh.
But she had to have a stake. The rest would be easy: she would pack a single trunk, go to the steamship office to book passage, call a cab early in the morning, and slip away to the railway station without warning. But what could she use for money?
Looking around her husband's room she noticed a small notebook. She opened it, idly curious, and saw that someone--presumably Stoddart, the agent's clerk--had been making an inventory of the house contents. It angered her to see her possessions listed in a clerk's notebook and casually valued: dining table PS9; Egyptian screen 30s; portrait of a woman by Joshua Reynolds, PS100. There must be a few thousand pounds' worth of paintings in the house, but she could not pack those in a trunk. She turned the page and read 65 snuffboxes--refer to jewelry department. She looked up. There in front of her, in the cabinet she had bought seventeen years ago, was the solution to her problem. Joseph's collection of jeweled snuffboxes was worth thousands, perhaps as much as a hundred thousand pounds. She could pack it into her luggage easily: the boxes themselves were tiny, designed to fit into a man's waistcoat pocket. They could be sold one by one, as money was needed.
Her heart beat faster. This could be the answer to her prayers.
