'Managed what?'
'Well, doesn't it strike you there was management about it somewhere? It does me.'
'I have been intimately acquainted with Mr. Howarth my whole life long, and I know him to be incapable of doing anything in the least degree unworthy.'
'Well, I've known him to tell a lie or two--and red-hot ones at that.'
'How dare you say, sir, that Mr. Howarth told you a lie?'
'Look here, my lord, this isn't a question of words, but of fact. How did Mr. Howarth transform a man who, in the morning, was hale and hearty, by the afternoon, into the kind of creature you spoke about--so that, by the night, he was dead? If he's a friend of yours, you'll get him to explain how he did it before he's made to.'
'Mr. Howarth will give you any and every explanation you have a right to demand.'
'My lord, I'm a mouthpiece for this lady. It's her husband we're talking about. A wife has as much right as a brother, not to speak of a brother's friend.'
The young gentleman turned to me.
'Surely you cannot seriously suppose that your husband was--as this gentleman seems to suggest--the subject of foul play?'