Yet women, and especially when the interests of children are at stake
upon their husbands' safety, rarely indeed are able to take this Roman
view of their duties.

To return to the narrative. Agnes had not, nor could have, the most
remote suspicion of this Barratt's connection with the shop which he
had not accidentally entered; and the sudden appearance of this wretch
it was, at the very moment of finding herself charged with so vile and
degrading an offence, that contributed most of all to rob her of her
natural firmness, by suddenly revealing to her terrified heart the
depth of the conspiracy which thus yawned like a gulf below her. And
not only had this sudden horror, upon discovering a guilty design in
what before had seemed accident, and links uniting remote incidents
which else seemed casual and disconnected, greatly disturbed and
confused her manner, which confusion again had become more intense upon
her own consciousness that she _was_ confused, and that her manner
was greatly to her disadvantage; but--which was the worst effect of
all, because the rest could not operate against her, except upon those
who were present to witness it, whereas this was noted down and
recorded--so utterly did her confusion strip her of all presence of
mind, that she did not consciously notice (and consequently could not
protest against at the moment when it was most important to do so, and
most natural) the important circumstance of the muff. This capital
objection, therefore, though dwelt upon and improved to the utmost at
the trial, was looked upon by the judges as an after-thought; and
merely because it had not been seized upon by herself, and urged in the
first moments of her almost incapacitating terror on finding this
amongst the circumstances of the charge against her--as if an ingenuous
nature, in the very act of recoiling with horror from a criminal charge
the most degrading, and in the very instant of discovering, with a