"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.
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