ss,--would
force upon us the extremely disagreeable duty of referring
very forcibly to past circumstances, which may otherwise,
perhaps, be allowed to be forgotten.

CHAPTER LXXII

The End of the Story of Mr. Emilius and Lady Eustace

The interest in the murder by no means came to an end when Phineas
Finn was acquitted. The new facts which served so thoroughly to prove
him innocent tended with almost equal weight to prove another man
guilty. And the other man was already in custody on a charge which
had subjected him to the peculiar ill-will of the British public. He,
a foreigner and a Jew, by name Yosef Mealyus,--as every one was now
very careful to call him,--had come to England, had got himself to be
ordained as a clergyman, had called himself Emilius, and had married
a rich wife with a title, although he had a former wife still living
in his own country. Had he called himself Jones it would have been
better for him, but there was something in the name of Emilius which
added a peculiar sting to his iniquities. It was now known that the
bigamy could be certainly proved, and that his last victim,--our
old friend, poor little Lizzie Eustace,--would be rescued from his
clutches. She would once more be a free woman, and as she had been
strong enough to defend her future income from his grasp, she was
perhaps as fortunate as she deserved to be. She was still young
and pretty, and there might come another lover more desirable than
Yosef Mealyus. That the man would have to undergo the punishment of
bigamy in its severest form, there was no doubt;--but would law, and
justice, and the prevailing desire for revenge, be able to get at
him in such a way that he might be hung? There certainly did exist
a strong desire to prove Mr. Emilius to have been a murderer, so
that there might come a fitting termination to his career in Great
Britain.

The police seemed to think that they could make but little either of
the coat or of the key, unless other evidence, that would be almost
sufficient in itself, should be found. Lord Fawn was informed that
his testimony would probably be required at another trial,--which
intimation affected him so grievously that his friends for a week
or two thought that he would altogether sink under his miseries.
But he would say nothing which would seem to criminate Mealyus. A
man hurrying along with a grey coat was all that he could swear to
now,--professing himself to be altogether i