FARRANT.  Poor devil!

WEDGECROFT.  O’Connell?

FARRANT.  Yes, of course.

WEDGECROFT.  I wonder.  Perhaps she didn’t realize he’d been sent for ... or felt then she was dying and didn’t care ... or lost her head.  I don’t know.

FARRANT.  Such a pretty little woman!

WEDGECROFT.  If I could have made him out and dealt with him, of course, I shouldn’t have come to you.  Farrant’s known him even longer than I have.

FARRANT.  I was with him at Harrow.

WEDGECROFT.  So I went to Farrant first.

      That part of the subject drops. CANTELUPE, who has not moved,
      strikes in again.

CANTELUPE.  How was Trebell’s guilt discovered?

FARRANT.  He wrote her one letter which she didn’t destroy.  O’Connell found it.

WEDGECROFT.  Picked it up from her desk ... it wasn’t even locked up.

FARRANT.  Not twenty words in it ... quite enough though.

HORSHAM.  His habit of being explicit ... of writing things down ...  I know!

      He shakes his head, deprecating all rashness.  There is another
      pause. FARRANT, getting up to pace about, breaks it.

FARRANT.  Look here, Wedgecroft, one thing is worrying me.  Had Trebell any foreknowledge of what she did and the risk she was running and could he have stopped it?

WEDGECROFT. [Almost ill-temperedly.] How could he have stopped it?

FARRANT.  Because ... well, I’m not a casuist ... but I know by instinct when I’m up against the wrong thing to do; and if he can’t be cleared on that point I won’t lift a finger to save him.

HORSHAM. [With nice judgment.] In using the term Any Foreknowledge,
Farrant, you may be more severe on him than you wish to be.

      FARRANT, unappreciative, continues.

FARRANT.  Otherwise ... well, we must admit, Cantelupe, that if it hadn’t been for the particular consequence of this it wouldn’t be anything to be so mightily shocked about.

CANTELUPE.  I disagree.

FARRANT.  My dear fellow, it’s our business to make laws and we know the difference of saying in one of ’em you may or you must.  Who ever proposed to insist on pillorying every case of spasmodic adultery?  One would never have done!  Some of these attachments do more harm ... to the third party, I mean ... some less.  But it’s only when a menage becomes socially impossible that a sensible man will interfere. [He adds quite unnecessarily.] I’m speaking quite impersonally, of course.

CANTELUPE. [As coldly as ever.] Trebell is morally responsible for every consequence of the original sin.

WEDGECROFT.  That is a hard saying.

FARRANT. [Continuing his own remarks quite independently.] And I put aside the possibility that he deliberately helped her to her death to save a scandal because I don’t believe it is a possibility.  But if that were so I’d lift my finger to help him to his.  I’d see him hanged with pleasure.