Here the report of Sir Alfred having been very ill-treated in the business, had its effect; and was adduced, though not, of course, in extenuation of such a crime; yet, as accounting for it on principles which experience acknowledged.
What passion so savage as revenge; what revenge so dire as that which is born of jealousy!
Mr. Fips, as a perfectly disinterested person, had, on one pretext or other, contrived to have some conversation with most of Sir Willoughby's servants, and in the course of such conversation, to insinuate the suggestions, and induce the replies, that best suited his purpose; while with long words, long faces, and terrific-sounding technicalities, he managed to arouse their selfish fears, to a degree which banished all better feelings. Then he would shake his head, and allowing his double chin to hang with hypocritical despondency, most devoutly hope that poor Sir Alfred might be found innocent. "In that case," he would add, "it will go hard with some of you, for the poison did not get into the glass without hands; and more likely, I say, to be by any other hands, than those of his own brother." By arts like these, instead of the affectionate respect for our hero, the indignant rejection of the idea of its being possible that he could have committed such a crime, which had else been the spontaneous sentiments of all the household, some were unconsciously rendered almost willing to hear their once beloved young master proved guilty, as the only means of clearing and saving themselves. Such thoughts, however, naturally produced an inward discontent, that, in its turn, gave to their outward demeanour a sullenness and gloom, which had a most baneful effect on the judgments of all with whom they came in contact; for it seemed to those who knew not how it had been produced, to indicate a secret conviction of the guilt of their master.
A thousand times each day was the butler asked by some one of the party assembled in the housekeeper's room at Arden, if he were sure the glasses were quite clean when he took them into the library. Of course he always declared they were, on which, another of the conclave, in a stage whisper, and with a face of mystery, would follow it up, by saying,
"Well, and from that, till we were all called in to see him in the agonies of death, there was no one near the room but their two selves."
"And wasn't the sediment the Doctor found in the bottom of the glass, arsenic?" observed a third.
"And didn't he offer to rinse the glass?" a fourth would ask; "and what could that be for?"
"And so fond of one another as they used to be when they were boys!" ejaculated a fifth.
"It's never been for the estate," said one of the women, and the rest of the female committee agreed with her, that it was owing to both brothers fixing their fancy on the same lady, and that Sir Alfred, that was the handsomest gentleman of the two by far, could not abide being turned off for him that had the fortune. There was many a young man, they observed, that had been the death of the girl that he was fond of, sooner than she should leave him, to go with another.
"And to give it to him at supper-time, too," said the gardener, who was a great politician, "thinking it would be put into the newspaper 'found dead in his bed,' and so hear no more of it."