Morn, noon, and night, in Toorak drawing-rooms and Melbourne Clubs, the case formed the principal subject of conversation. And Mrs. Grundy was horrified. Here was a young man, well born--"the Fitzgeralds, my dear, an Irish family, with royal blood in their veins"--well-bred--"most charming manners, I assure you, and so very good-looking" and engaged to one of the richest girls in Melbourne--"pretty enough, madam, no doubt, but he wanted her money, sly dog;" and this young man, who had been petted by the ladies, voted a good fellow by the men, and was universally popular, both in drawing-room and club, had committed a vulgar murder--it was truly shocking. What was the world coming to, and what were gaols and lunatic asylums built for if men of young Fitzgerald's calibre were not put in them, and kept from killing people? And then, of course, everybody asked everybody else who Whyte was, and why he had never been heard of before. All people who had met Mr. Whyte were worried to death with questions about him, and underwent a species of social martyrdom as to who he was, what he was like, why he was killed, and all the rest of the insane questions which some people will ask. It was talked about everywhere--in fashionable drawing-rooms at five o'clock tea, over thin bread and butter and souchong; at clubs, over brandies and sodas and cigarettes; by working men over their mid-day pint, and by their wives in the congenial atmosphere of the back yard over the wash-tub. The papers were full of paragraphs about the famous murder, and the society papers gave an interview with the prisoner by their special reporters, which had been composed by those gentlemen out of the floating rumours which they heard around, and their own fertile imaginations. As to the prisoner's guilt, everyone was certain of it. The cabman Royston had sworn that Fitzgerald had got into the cab with Whyte, and when he got out Whyte was dead. There could be no stronger proof than that, and the general opinion was that the prisoner would put in no defence, but would throw himself on the mercy of the court. Even the church caught the contagion, and ministers--Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian, together with the lesser lights of minor denominations--took the hansom cab murder as a text whereon to preach sermons on the profligacy of the age, and to point out that the only ark which could save men from the rising flood of infidelity and immorality was their own particular church. "Gad," as Calton remarked, after hearing five or six ministers each claim their own church as the one special vessel of safety, "there seems to be a whole fleet of arks!"