"I wish we could get that Lord Fawn out of the way."
"Ah;—but we can't."
"And will they—hang him?"
"If they convict him, they will."
"A man we all knew so well! And just when we had made up our minds to do everything for him. Do you know I'm not a bit surprised. I've felt before now as though I should like to have done it myself."
"He could be very nasty, Duchess!"
"I did so hate that man. But I'd give,—oh, I don't know what I'd give to bring him to life again this minute. What will Lady Laura do?" In answer to this, Barrington Erle only shrugged his shoulders. Lady Laura was his cousin. "We mustn't give him up, you know, Mr. Erle."
"What can we do?"
"Surely we can do something. Can't we get it in the papers that he must be innocent,—so that everybody should be made to think so? And if we could get hold of the lawyers, and make them not want to—to destroy him! There's nothing I wouldn't do. There's no getting hold of a judge, I know."
"No, Duchess. The judges are stone."