Say, repeated Polly, was it your lady that made the first advances, or was it you, you creature——­

If the lady had so much honour, bawled the mother, excuse me, so—­Excuse me, Sir, [confound the old wretch! she had like to have said son!]—­If the lady has so much honour, as we have supposed, she will appear to vindicate a poor servant, misled, as she has been, by such large promises!—­But I hope, Sir, you will do them both justice:  I hope you will!—­Good lack!—­Good lack! clapping her hands together, to grant her every thing she could ask—­to indulge her in her unworthy hatred to my poor innocent house!—­to let her go to Hampstead, though your honour told us, you could get no condescension from her; no, not the least—­O Sir, O Sir—­I hope—­I hope—­if your lady will not come out—­I hope you will find a way to hear this cause in her presence.  I value not my doors on such an occasion as this.  Justice I ever loved.  I desire you will come to the bottom of it in clearance to me.  I’ll be sworn I had no privity in this black corruption.

Just then we heard the lady’s door, unbar, unlock, unbolt——­

Now, Sir!

Now, Mr. Lovelace!

Now, Sir! from every encouraging mouth!——­

But, O Jack!  Jack!  Jack!  I can write no more!

***

If you must have it all, you must!

Now, Belford, see us all sitting in judgment, resolved to punish the fair bribress—­I, and the mother, the hitherto dreaded mother, the nieces Sally, Polly, the traitress Dorcas, and Mabell, a guard, as it were, over Dorcas, that she might not run away, and hide herself:—­all pre-determined, and of necessity pre-determined, from the journey I was going to take, and my precarious situation with her—­and hear her unbolt, unlock, unbar, the door; then, as it proved afterwards, put the key into the lock on the outside, lock the door, and put it in her pocket—­Will.  I knew, below, who would give me notice, if, while we were all above, she should mistake her way, and go down stairs, instead of coming into the dining-room:  the street-door also doubly secured, and every shutter to the windows round the house fastened, that no noise or screaming should be heard—­[such was the brutal preparation]—­and then hear her step towards us, and instantly see her enter among us, confiding in her own innocence; and with a majesty in her person and manner, that is natural to her; but which then shone out in all its glory!—­Every tongue silent, every eye awed, every heart quaking, mine, in a particular manner sunk, throbless, and twice below its usual region, to once at my throat:—­a shameful recreant:—­She silent too, looking round her, first on me; then on the mother, no longer fearing her; then on Sally, Polly, and the culprit Dorcas!—­such the glorious power of innocence exerted at that awful moment!