have committed some bloody act--some murderous act. Dreadful was the
panic I underwent. God pardon the wrong I did; and even now I pray to
him--as though the past thing were a future thing and capable of
change--that he would forbid her for ever to know what was the
derogatory thought I had admitted. I sometimes think, by recollecting a
momentary blush that suffused her marble countenance,--I think--I fear
that she might have read what was fighting in my mind. Yet that would
admit of another explanation. If she did read the very worst, meek
saint! she suffered no complaint or sense of that injury to escape her.
It might, however, be that perception, or it might be that fear which
roused her to an effort that otherwise had seemed too revolting to
undertake. She now rehearsed the whole steps of the affair from first
to last; but the only material addition, which her narrative made to
that which the trial itself had involved, was the following:--On two
separate occasions previous to the last and fatal one, when she had
happened to walk unaccompanied by me in the city, the monster Barratt
had met her in the street. He had probably--and this was, indeed,
subsequently ascertained--at first, and for some time afterwards,
mistaken her rank, and had addressed some proposals to her, which, from
the suppressed tone of his speaking, or from her own terror and
surprise, she had not clearly understood; but enough had reached her
alarmed ear to satisfy her that they were of a nature in the last
degree licentious and insulting. Terrified and shocked rather than
indignant, for she too easily presumed the man to be a maniac, she
hurried homewards; and was rejoiced, on first venturing to look round
when close to her own gate, to perceive that the man was not following.
There, however, she was mistaken; for either on this occasion, or on
some other, he had traced her homewards. The last of these rencontres
had occurred just three months before the fatal 6th of April; and if,
in any one instance, Agnes had departed from the strict line of her