ly knows."

The wife's anxiety, and then her gratitude, need hardly be
described,--nor the astonishment of the husband, which by no means
decreased on reflection, at the opportune re-appearance in the nick
of time of the man whom three minutes before the attack he had left
in the act of going in the opposite direction.

"I had seen the men, and thought it best to run round by the corner
of Grosvenor Square," said Phineas.

"May God bless you," said Lady Laura.

"Amen," said the Cabinet Minister.

"I think he was born to be my friend," said Lady Laura.

The Cabinet Minister said nothing more that night. He was never given
to much talking, and the little accident which had just occurred to
him did not tend to make words easy to him. But he pressed our hero's
hand, and Lady Laura said that of course Phineas would come to them
on the morrow. Phineas remarked that his first business must be to
go to the police-office, but he promised that he would come down to
Grosvenor Place immediately afterwards. Then Lady Laura also pressed
his hand, and looked--; she looked, I think, as though she thought
that Phineas would only have done right had he repeated the offence
which he had committed under the waterfall of Loughlinter.

"Garrotted!" said Lord Chiltern, when Phineas told him the story
before they went to bed that night. He had been smoking, sipping
brandy-and-water, and waiting for Finn's return. "Robert Kennedy
garrotted!"

"The fellow was in the act of doing it."

"And you stopped him?"

"Yes;--I got there just in time. Wasn't it lucky?"

"You ought to be garrotted yourself. I should have lent the man a
hand had I been there."

"How can you say anything so horrible? But you are drinking too much,
old fellow, and I shall lock the bottle up."

"If there were no one in London drank more than I do, the wine
merchants would have a bad time of it. And so the new Cabinet
Minister has been garrotted in the street. Of course I'm sorry for
poor Laura's sake."

"Luckily he's not much the worse for it;--only a little bruised."

"I wonder whether it's on the cards he should be improved by
it;--worse, except in the way of being strangled, he could not be.
However, as he's my brother-in-law, I'm obliged to you for rescuing
him. Come, I'll go to bed. I must say, if he was to be garrotted I
should like to have been there to see it." That was the manner in
which Lord Chiltern received the tidings of the terrible accident