One alone of all his
former friends made an effort in his favor, and ventured to insinuate
that his guilt was far from certain. This was Lord Charles Frobisher,
who, seeing in the one-sidedness of public opinion the impossibility of
obtaining a bet, tried thus to "get up" an "innocent party," in the hope
of a profitable wager.

But what became of Linton all this time? His game was a difficult one;
and to enable him to play it successfully he needed reflection. To
this end he affected to be so shocked by the terrible event as to be
incapable of mixing in society. He retired, therefore, to his cottage
near Dublin, and for some weeks lived a life of perfect seclusion. Mr.
Phillis accompanied him; for Linton would not trust him out of his sight
till--as he muttered in his own phrase--"all was over."

This was, indeed, the most eventful period of Linton's life; and with
consummate skill he saw that any move on his part would be an error.
It is true that, through channels with whose workings he was long
conversant, he contributed the various paragraphs to the papers by which
Cashel's guilt was foreshadowed; his knowledge of Roland suggesting many
a circumstance well calculated to substantiate the charge of crime. If
he never ventured abroad into the world, he made himself master of
all its secret whisperings; and heard how he was himself commended for
delicacy and good feeling, with the satisfaction of a man who glories
in a cheat. And how many are there who play false in life, less from the
gain than the gratification of vanity!--a kind of diabolical pride in
outwitting and overreaching those whose good faith has made them weak!
The polite world does not take the same interest in deeds of terror
as do their more humble brethren; they take their "horrors" as they do
their one glass of Tokay at dessert,--a something, of which a little
more would be nauseating. The less polished classes were, therefore,
those who took the greatest pleasure in following up every clew and
tracing each circumstance that pointed to Roland's guilt; and so, at
last, his name was rarely mentioned among those with whom so lately he
had lived in daily, almost hourly, companionship.

When Linton, then, deemed the time expired which his feelings of grief
and shame had demanded for retirement, he reappeared in the world pretty
much as men had always seen him. A very close observer, if he would have
suffered any one to be such, might have perhaps detected