To tell the truth, even suggestions of this kind, which were partially comic and wholly theatrical, came to be entertained by Winton before his trial was over. One of his friends seriously advised him to get an Italian servant, used to conspiracies, smuggled into the house, in order to deliver the captive. Another thought that rope-ladders and a midnight descent from the window might be practicable; but a rope-ladder from a second-floor window in Grosvenor Square would not be easy to manage, and a wag intervened and suggested a fire-escape, which turned the whole into ridicule. This was one of the aspects of the case, indeed, which aggravated everything else. The whole situation, being so serious and painful to two or three people, was, to the rest of the world, irresistible from the comic side. People drove through Grosvenor Square on purpose to look up at the second-floor windows: and as the instruments began to tune up, and the feast to be set in order for the first arrivals of society, the importance of the strange event grew greater and greater. A new Home Secretary, and all the consequent changes in the Cabinet, faded into nothing in comparison. “Have you heard that Jane Altamont was half-married to Regy Winton some time in the winter, and that odious old Duke dragged her from the very altar, and has kept her ever since under lock and key?” Very likely it was Lady Germaine who first put the story about, but it was taken up by everybody with all the interest and excitement which such a tale warranted. Further details were given that were almost incredible; to wit, that the Duchess herself, though living in the same house, was not allowed to see her daughter, and that Lady Jane for two months had only breathed the fresh air through her window, and had never left the suite of rooms in which she was confined; worse than if she had been in jail, everybody said. But not even this was the point which most roused the popular indignation (if we may call the indignation of the drawing-rooms popular). Half-married! that was the terrible thought.