er his life?"

"It will make people think that the things are true which have been
said."

"And will they hang him because I love him? I do love him. Violet
knows how well I have always loved him." Lord Chiltern turned his
angry face upon his wife. Lady Chiltern put her arm round her
sister-in-law's waist, and whispered some words into her ear. "What
is that to me?" continued the half-frantic woman. "I do love him. I
have always loved him. I shall love him to the end. He is all my life
to me."

"Shame should prevent your telling it," said Lord Chiltern.

"I feel no shame. There is no disgrace in love. I did disgrace
myself when I gave the hand for which he asked to another man,
because,--because--" But she was too noble to tell her brother even
then that at the moment of her life to which she was alluding she had
married the rich man, rejecting the poor man's hand, because she had
given up all her fortune to the payment of her brother's debts. And
he, though he had well known what he had owed to her, and had never
been easy till he had paid the debt, remembered nothing of all this
now. No lending and paying back of money could alter the nature
either of his feelings or his duty in such an emergency as this.
"And, mind you," she continued, turning to her sister-in-law, "there
is no place for the shame of which he is thinking," and she pointed
her finger out at her brother. "I love him,--as a mother might love
her child, I fancy; but he has no love for me; none;--none. When I am
with him, I am only a trouble to him. He comes to me, because he is
good; but he would sooner be with you. He did love me once;--but then
I could not afford to be so loved."

"You can do no good by seeing him," said her brother.

"But I will see him. You need not scowl at me as though you wished
to strike me. I have gone through that which makes me different from
other women, and I care not what they say of me. Violet understands
it all;--but you understand nothing."

"Be calm, Laura," said her sister-in-law, "and Oswald will do all
that can be done."

"But they will hang him."

"Nonsense!" said her brother. "He has not been as yet committed for
his trial. Heaven knows how much has to be done. It is as likely as
not that in three days' time he will be out at large, and all the
world will be running after him just because he has been in Newgate."

"But who will look after him?"

"He has plenty of friends. I will see that he is not le