Anthony Trollope opens The Eustace Diamonds with a verdict and then a refusal. Lizzie Greystock, says the first sentence, "had done very well with herself", and her enemies, "the more numerous and active body of the two", admit it. The second sentence says how her story will be told:
A narrator who begins this way keeps his distance, and here the distance has a style: Lizzie's story arrives as a matter of accounts.
Her father the admiral "had no particular fortune", yet his daughter went about with "jewels on her fingers, and red gems hanging round her neck". He dies in debt, and Messrs. Harter and Benjamin call to ask for the jewels back. Lizzie says there is nothing worth restoring; the diamonds were "parted with" to pay the admiral's other debts. The narrator states that they are in fact pawned, then gives her reasons as a general rule: