"Who was it, Oswald?" asked his wife; and she also was now too deeply interested to keep her seat.
"They have arrested two men," said Lord Chiltern;—"that Jew who married Lady Eustace, and—" But there he paused. He had determined beforehand that he would tell his sister the double arrest that the doubt this implied might lessen the weight of the blow; but now he found it almost impossible to mention the name.
"Who is the other, Oswald?" said his wife.
"Not Phineas," screamed Lady Laura.
"Yes, indeed; they have arrested him, and I have just come from the court." He had no time to go on, for his sister was crouching prostrate on the floor before him. She had not fainted. Women do not faint under such shocks. But in her agony she had crouched down rather than fallen, as though it were vain to attempt to stand upright with so crushing a weight of sorrow on her back. She uttered one loud shriek, and then covering her face with her hands burst out into a wail of sobs. Lady Chiltern and her brother both tried to raise her, but she would not be lifted. "Why will you not hear me through, Laura?" said he.
"You do not think he did it?" said his wife.
"I'm sure he did not," replied Lord Chiltern.
The poor woman, half-lying, half-seated, on the floor, still hiding her face with her hands, still bursting with half suppressed sobs, heard and understood both the question and the answer. But the fact was not altered to her,—nor the condition of the man she loved. She had not yet begun to think whether it were possible that he should have been guilty of such a crime. She had heard none of the circumstances, and knew nothing of the manner of the man's death. It might be that Phineas had killed the man, bringing himself within the reach of the law, and that yet he should have done nothing to merit her reproaches;—hardly even her reprobation! Hitherto she felt only the sorrow, the annihilation of the blow;—but not the shame with which it would overwhelm the man for whom she so much coveted the good opinion of the world.
"You hear what he says, Laura."
"They are determined to destroy him," she sobbed out, through her tears.