“Such a shame!” returned Lady Temple.
“They acquitted the dreadful man, and the poor
woman, whom he drove to it, has a year’s imprisonment
and hard labour!”
“Acquitted! What, is he off?”
“Oh, no, no! he is safe, and waiting for the
Assizes, all owing to the Colonel and little Rose.”
“He is committed for the former offence,”
said Colonel Keith; “the important one.”
“That’s right! Good night!
And how,” he added, reining back his horse,
“did your cousin get through it?”
“Oh, they were so hard on her!” cried
Lady Temple. “I could hardly bring myself
to speak to Sir Edward after it! It was as if
he thought it all her fault!”
“Her evidence broke down completely,”
said Colonel Keith. “Sir Edward spared
her as much as he could; but the absurdity of her whole
conduct was palpable. I hope she has had a lesson.”
Alick’s impatient horse flew on with him, and
Colin muttered to Alison under his mufflers,—“I
never could make out whether that is the coolest or
the most sensitive fellow living!”
THE AFTER CLAP
“I have read in the marvellous heart of
man,
That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.
“Encamped beside life’s rushing
stream,
In Fancy’s misty light,
Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
Portentous through the night.”
The
Beleaguered City, Longfellow.
A dinner party at the Deanery in the sessions week
was an institution, but Rachel, lying on the sofa
in a cool room, had thought herself exempt from it,
and was conscious for the time of but one wish, namely,
to be let alone, and to be able to shut her eyes,
without finding the lids, as it were, lined with tiers
of gazing faces, and curious looks turned on her,
and her ears from the echo of the roar of fury that
had dreadfully terrified both her and her mother,
and she felt herself to have merited! The crush
of public censure was not at the moment so overwhelming
as the strange morbid effect of having been the focus
of those many, many glances, and if she reflected
at all, it was with a weary speculating wonder whether
one pair of dark grey eyes had been among those levelled
at her. She thought that if they had, she could
not have missed either their ironical sting, or perchance
some kindly gleam of sympathy, such as had sometimes
surprised her from under the flaxen lashes.
There she had lain, unmolested and conscious of a
certain relief in the exceeding calm; the grey pinnacle
of the cathedral, and a few branches of an elm-tree
alone meeting her eye through the open window, and
the sole sound the cawing of the rooks, whose sailing
flight amused and attracted her glance from time to
time with dreamy interest. Grace had gone into
court to hear Maria Hatherton’s trial, and all
was still.
