When we were closeted in the study by our two selves, with a good cigar and a brandy and soda, I soon approached the subject which was troubling my mind. I thought Mr. Dove would have died of laughing at my extraordinary mistake in taking his house to be a private lunatic asylum. He stamped and danced about the room in his uproarious glee, and I could not get a word out of him for some time—until he was thoroughly exhausted.
I must admit that when I heard the name of the establishment I was greatly surprised, but it must be remembered that there is not a similar house to 1090, Finsbury Square, in her Majesty's dominions.
"If love is lunacy," my host said, waving his hand toward the ball-room, "you are right, but my patients reside in an abode of joy, not of sorrow, and they are free to depart at any time—in couples."
In other words, the place was a Matrimonial Agency.
CRUEL WORK OF AN INTIMATE FRIEND.
Public sympathy was entirely with the accused, yet the verdict pronounced—that of Guilty—was generally expected. The evidence put forward by the prosecutor was so conclusive. There was not much chance for the prisoner when two witnesses swore that he (Edward Fraser) had said in their hearing that he would do the deceased (Sydney Marshall) some deadly harm, and when three more individuals were placed in the box to prove that they beheld the struggle between the two men, and saw the person in custody push his opponent over the cliffs into the water. Much disappointment was, however, felt throughout the country when the grand jury scheduled the crime as murder instead of manslaughter. But this decision was quite of a piece with Fraser's other misfortunes. Marshall's body had not been recovered, notwithstanding a very diligent search, and the local fishermen thought that it had been carried out to sea by the under-current. Still no one doubted that the man had perished. Although he richly deserved his fate, that was no justification of the deed in the eye of the law. Provocation beyond human endurance does not, as poor Fraser found out, permit a man to be a law unto himself. The husband may have his home broken up, his future career destroyed, his wife dishonoured—as in the case of this man—but he is prohibited from laying violent hands on the seducer.
The judge in sentencing the prisoner to be hanged, said that the recommendation of the jury (to mercy) would be forwarded to the proper quarter, but that he could not hold out much hope of a reprieve. It so happened that a number of capital sentences had been commuted about this time, and the Government deemed it necessary, as murders were on the increase, to make an example. Whichever way it turned, fortune was decidedly adverse to Fraser. He was not only unlucky in having a treacherous friend and an unchaste wife, but he must needs seek his revenge at an inopportune moment.