the thought brought a deadly pallor to her face—­in order that, should the worst befall, her memory might not be involuntarily connected in his mind with images of dungeons, and disgrace, and shame.  Jane Eccles had received what is called in the country, “a good schooling,” and the books Mrs. Davies had lent her she had eagerly perused.  She was therefore to a certain extent a cultivated person; and her speech and manners were mild, gentle, and, so to speak, religious.  I generally found, when I visited her, a Bible or prayer-book in her hand.  This, however, from my experience, comparatively slight though it was, did not much impress me in her favor—­devotional sentiment so easily, for a brief time, assumed, being in nine such cases out of ten a hypocritical deceit.  Still she, upon the whole, made a decidedly favorable impression on me, and I no longer so much wondered at the bigotry of unbelief manifested by Mrs. Davies in behalf of her apparently amiable and grateful protegee.

But beyond the moral doubt thus suggested of the prisoner’s guilt, my interviews with her utterly failed to extract anything from her in rebutment of the charge upon which she was about to be arraigned.  At first she persisted in asserting that the prosecution was based upon manifest error; that the impounded notes, instead of being forged, were genuine Bank-of-England paper.  It was some time before I succeeded in convincing her that this hope, to which she so eagerly, desperately clung, was a fallacious one.  I did so at last; and either, thought I, as I marked her varying color and faltering voice, “either you are a consummate actress, or else the victim of some frightful delusion or conspiracy.”

“I will see you, if you please, to-morrow,” she said, looking up from the chair upon which, with her head bowed and her face covered with her hands, she had been seated for several minutes in silence.  “My thoughts are confused now, but to-morrow I shall be more composed; better able to decide if—­to talk, I mean, of this unhappy business.”

I thought it better to comply without remonstrance, and at once took my leave.

When I returned the next afternoon, the governor of the prison informed me that the brother of my client, James Eccles, quite a dashing gentleman, had had a long interview with her.  He had left about two hours before, with the intention, he said, of calling upon me.

I was conducted to the room where my conferences with the prisoner usually took place.  In a few minutes she appeared, much flushed and excited, it seemed to be alternately with trembling joy and hope, and doubt, and nervous fear.

“Well,” I said, “I trust you are now ready to give me your unreserved confidence, without which, be assured, that any reasonable hope of a successful issue from the peril in which you are involved is out of the question.”

The varying emotions I have noticed were clearly traceable as they swept over her tell-tale countenance during the minute or so that elapsed before she spoke.