John, assisted by his fellow-servant, raised and carried her down stairs.  “Poor soul,” said he, “you shall not lay in the street this night.  I have a bed and a poor little hovel, where my wife and her little ones rest them, but they shall watch to night, and you shall be sheltered from danger.”  They placed her in a chair; and the benevolent man, assisted by one of his comrades, carried her to the place where his wife and children lived.  A surgeon was sent for:  he bled her, she gave signs of returning life, and before the dawn gave birth to a female infant.  After this event she lay for some hours in a kind of stupor; and if at any time she spoke, it was with a quickness and incoherence that plainly evinced the total deprivation of her reason.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Reasons why and wherefore.

The reader of sensibility may perhaps be astonished to find Mrs. Crayton could so positively deny any knowledge of Charlotte; it is therefore but just that her conduct should in some measure be accounted for.  She had ever been fully sensible of the superiority of Charlotte’s sense and virtue; she was conscious that she had never swerved from rectitude, had it not been for her bad precepts and worse example.  These were things as yet unknown to her husband, and she wished not to have that part of her conduct exposed to him, as she had great reason to fear she had already lost considerable part of that power she once maintained over him.  She trembled whilst Charlotte was in the house, lest the Colonel should return; she perfectly well remembered how much he seemed interested in her favour whilst on their passage from England, and made no doubt, but, should he see her in her present distress, he would offer her an asylum, and protect her to the utmost of his power.  In that case she feared the unguarded nature of Charlotte might discover to the Colonel the part she had taken in the unhappy girl’s elopement, and she well knew the contrast between her own and Charlotte’s conduct would make the former appear in no very respectable light.  Had she reflected properly, she would have afforded the poor girl protection; and by enjoining her silence, ensured it by acts of repeated kindness; but vice in general blinds its votaries, and they discover their real characters to the world when they are most studious to preserve appearances.

Just so it happened with Mrs. Crayton:  her servants made no scruple of mentioning the cruel conduct of their lady to a poor distressed lunatic who claimed her protection; every one joined in reprobating her inhumanity; nay even Corydon thought she might at least have ordered her to be taken care of, but he dare not even hint it to her, for he lived but in her smiles, and drew from her lavish fondness large sums to support an extravagance to which the state of his own finances was very inadequate; it cannot therefore be supposed that he wished Mrs. Crayton to be very liberal in her bounty to the afflicted suppliant; yet vice had not so entirely seared over his heart, but the sorrows of Charlotte could find a vulnerable part.