Should it be Lord Fawn or should it be a Corsair?
The worst of Lord Fawn was the undoubted fact that he was not himself a great man.

He could, no doubt, make his wife a peeress; but he was poor, encumbered with a host of sisters, dull as a blue-book, and possessed of little beyond his peerage to recommend him.

If she could only find a peer, unmarried, with a dash of the Corsair about him! In the meantime, what was she to do about the jewels?
There was staying with her at this time a certain Miss Macnulty, who was related, after some distant fashion, to old Lady Linlithgow, and who was as utterly destitute of possessions or means of existence as any unfortunate, well-born, and moderately-educated, middle-aged woman in London.

To live upon her friends, such as they might be, was the only mode of life within her reach.

It was not that she had chosen such dependence; nor, indeed, had she endeavoured to reject it.