She was immediately carried out of court; and as soon as the sensation caused by so extraordinary and painful an incident had subsided, the trial proceeded.  A cloud of witnesses to character were called; the judge summed up; the jury deliberated for a few minutes; and a verdict of “guilty” was returned.  Sentence to die on the day after the next followed, and all was over!

Yes; all was, we deemed, over; but happily a decree, reversing that of Mr. Justice Grose, had gone forth in Heaven.  I was sitting at home about an hour after the court had closed, painfully musing on the events of the day, when the door of the apartment suddenly flew open, and in rushed Mr. Sharpe in a state of great excitement, accompanied by Sergeant Edwards, whom the reader will remember had called the previous day at that gentleman’s house.  In a few minutes I was in possession of the following important information, elicited by Mr. Sharpe from the half-willing, half-reluctant sergeant, whom he had found waiting for him at his office:—­

In the first place, Captain Everett was not the father of the prisoner!  The young man was the son of Mary Fitzhugh by her first marriage; and his name, consequently, was Mordaunt, not Everett.  His mother had survived her second marriage barely six months.  Everett, calculating doubtless upon the great pecuniary advantages which would be likely to result to himself as the reputed father of the heir to a splendid English estate, should the quarrel with Mrs. Eleanor Fitzhugh—­as he nothing doubted—­be ultimately made up, had brought his deceased wife’s infant son up as his own.  This was the secret of Edwards and his wife; and to purchase their silence, Captain Everett had agreed to give the bond for an annuity which Mr. Sharpe was to draw up.  The story of the legacy was a mere pretence.  When Edwards was in Yorkshire before, Everett pacified him for the time with a sum of money, and a promise to do more for him as soon as his reputed son came into the property.  He then hurried the cidevant sergeant back to London; and at the last interview he had with him, gave him a note addressed to a person living in one of the streets—­I forget which—­leading out of the Haymarket, together with a five-pound note, which he was to pay the person to whom the letter was addressed for some very rare and valuable powder, which the captain wanted for scientific purposes, and which Edwards was to forward by coach to Woodlands Manor-House.  Edwards obeyed his instructions, and delivered the message to the queer bushy-bearded foreigner to whom it was addressed, who told him that, if he brought him the sum of money mentioned in the note on the following day, he should have the article required.  He also bade him bring a well-stoppered bottle to put it in.  As the bottle was to be sent by coach, Edwards purchased a tin flask, as affording a better security against breakage; and having obtained the powder, packed it