ing it, even to herself."

"You talk of the heart as though we could control it."

"The heart will follow the thoughts, and they may be controlled. I
am not passionate, perhaps, as you are, and I think I can control
my heart. But my fortune has been kind to me, and I have never been
tempted. Laura, do not think I am preaching to you."

"Oh no;--but your husband; think of him, and think of mine! You have
babies."

"May God make me thankful. I have every good thing on earth that God
can give."

"And what have I? To see that man prosper in life, who they tell me
is a murderer; that man who is now in a felon's gaol,--whom they
will hang for ought we know,--to see him go forward and justify
my thoughts of him! that yesterday was all I had. To-day I have
nothing,--except the shame with which you and Oswald say that I have
covered myself."

"Laura, I have never said so."

"I saw it in your eye when he accused me. And I know that it is
shameful. I do know that I am covered with shame. But I can bear my
own disgrace better than his danger." After a long pause,--a silence
of probably some fifteen minutes,--she spoke again. "If Robert should
die,--what would happen then?"

"It would be--a release, I suppose," said Lady Chiltern in a voice so
low, that it was almost a whisper.

"A release indeed;--and I would become that man's wife the next day,
at the foot of the gallows;--if he would have me. But he would not
have me."

CHAPTER LII

Mr. Kennedy's Will

Mr. Kennedy had fired a pistol at Phineas Finn in Macpherson's Hotel
with the manifest intention of blowing out the brains of his presumed
enemy, and no public notice had been taken of the occurrence. Phineas
himself had been only too willing to pass the thing by as a trifling
accident, if he might be allowed to do so, and the Macphersons had
been by far too true to their great friend to think of giving him in
charge to the police. The affair had been talked about, and had come
to the knowledge of reporters and editors. Most of the newspapers had
contained paragraphs giving various accounts of the matter; and one
or two had followed the example of _The People's Banner_ in demanding
that the police should investigate the matter. But the matter had not
been investigated. The police were supposed to know nothing about
it,--as how should they, no one having seen or heard the shot but
they who were determined to be silent? Mr. Quintus Slide had been
indignant a