Mr. Bourchier is brought to trial and triumphantly acquitted. So far,
everything goes well with him. Unfortunately, however, the murdered man,
with that superhuman strength which on the stage and in novels always
accompanies the agony of death, had managed in falling from the dog-cart
to throw the marriage certificate up a fir tree! There it is found by a
worthy farmer who talks that conventional rustic dialect which, though
unknown in the provinces, is such a popular element in every Adelphi
melodrama; and it ultimately falls into the hands of an unscrupulous
young man who succeeds in blackmailing Mr. Bourchier and in marrying his
daughter. Mr. Bourchier suffers tortures from excess of chloral and of
remorse; and there is psychology of a weird and wonderful kind, that kind
which Mr. Conway may justly be said to have invented and the result of
which is not to be underrated. For, if to raise a goose skin on the
reader be the aim of art, Mr. Conway must be regarded as a real artist.
So harrowing is his psychology that the ordinary methods of punctuation
are quite inadequate to convey it. Agony and asterisks follow each other
on every page and, as the murderer's conscience sinks deeper into chaos,
the chaos of commas increases.

Finally, Mr. Bourchier dies, splendide mendax to the end. A confession,
he rightly argued, would break up the harmony of the family circle,
particularly as his eldest son had married the daughter of his luckless
victim. Few criminals are so thoughtful for others as Mr. Bourchier is,
and we are not without admiration for the unselfishness of one who can
give up the luxury of a death-bed repentance.

A Cardinal Sin, then, on the whole, may be regarded as a crude novel of a
common melodramatic type. What is painful about it is its style, which
is slipshod and careless. To describe a honeymoon as a _rare occurrence