The fashionable world was powerfully excited by the exposure of Reginald Tracy. Some wiseacres shook their heads, and observed that they had always suspected there was something wrong about the rector; others plainly asserted that they had even prophesied what would happen some day. The fair sex all agreed that it was a great pity, as he _was_ such a charming preacher and such a handsome man! The press was not idle in respect to the business. The newspapers teemed with "Latest Particulars;" and all the penny-a-liners in London were on the alert to collate additional facts. Nine out of ten of these facts, however, turned out to be pure fictions. One journal, conducted on more imaginative principles than its contemporaries, promulgated a new discovery which it had made in respect to the rector's history, and coolly fixed upon his back all the murders which had occurred in the metropolis during the previous dozen years, and the perpetrators of which had never yet been detected. Heaven knows Reginald Tracy was bad enough; but if one believed all which was now said of him in the public journals, no monster that ever disgraced humanity was so vile as he. Some of the cheap unstamped periodicals treated their readers with portraits of the rector; and as very few of the artists who were employed to draw them had ever seen their subject, and were now unable to obtain access to him, their inventive faculties were put to the most exciting test. And, as a convincing proof that no two persons entertain the same idea of an object which they have never seen, it may be observed that there was a most extraordinary variety in the respective characteristics of these portraits. In a word, the rector's name engrossed universal attention:—a cheap romance was issued, entitled "The Murdered Housekeeper; or the Corrupt Clergyman;"—one of the minor theatres attracted crowded houses by the embodiment of the particulars of the case in a melodrama;—and Madame Tussaud added the effigy of Reginald Tracy to her collection of wax-works. But what were the feelings of Lady Cecilia Harborough when the terrible announcement of the rector's arrest met her ears! We must observe that when she first heard of the death of the housekeeper, she entertained a faint suspicion that Reginald, and not Katherine Wilmot, was the author of the deed. But while the young girl was yet in prison, before the trial, and when Cecilia and the rector met, the latter so eloquently expatiated upon the case, that Cecilia's suspicions were hushed; and she learnt to look upon the housekeeper's death following so shortly on the exposure of the rector's hypocrisy to that female, as a remarkable coincidence only. Moreover, the rector had all along declared his impression that the housekeeper had committed suicide, and that the innocence of Katherine would be made apparent before the judges.