d? "I was to be hung or saved from hanging according to
the chances of such a thing as this! I do not care for my life in a
country where such injustice can be done." His friend endeavoured to
assure him that even had nothing been heard of the key the jury would
have acquitted him. But Phineas would not believe him. It had seemed
to him as he had listened to the whole proceeding that the Court had
been against him. The Attorney and Solicitor-General had appeared to
him resolved upon hanging him,--men who had been, at any rate, his
intimate acquaintances, with whom he had sat on the same bench, who
ought to have known him. And the judge had taken the part of Lord
Fawn, who had seemed to Phineas to be bent on swearing away his life.
He had borne himself very gallantly during that week, having in all
his intercourse with his attorney, spoken without a quaver in his
voice, and without a flaw in the perspicuity of his intelligence.
But now, when Mr. Low came to him, explaining to him that it was
impossible that a verdict should be found against him, he was quite
broken down. "There is nothing left of me," he said at the end of the
interview. "I feel that I had better take to my bed and die. Even
when I think of all that friends have done for me, it fails to cheer
me. In this matter I should not have had to depend on friends. Had
not she gone for me to that place every one would have believed me to
be a murderer."

And yet in his solitude he thought very much of the marvellous love
shown to him by his friends. Words had been spoken which had been
very sweet to him in all his misery,--words such as neither men nor
women can say to each other in the ordinary intercourse of life,
much as they may wish that their purport should be understood. Lord
Chiltern, Lord Cantrip, and Mr. Monk had alluded to him as a man
specially singled out by them for their friendship. Lady Cantrip,
than whom no woman in London was more discreet, had been equally
enthusiastic. Then how gracious, how tender, how inexpressibly sweet
had been the words of her who had been Violet Effingham! And now the
news had reached him of Madame Goesler's journey to the continent.
"It was a wonderful thing for her to do," Mr. Low had said. Yes,
indeed! Remembering all that had passed between them he acknowledged
to himself that it was very wonderful. Were it not that his back was
now broken, that he was prostrate and must remain so, a man utterly
crushed by what he had