infirmity, when her better angel was away from her side, she had
yielded to a sudden impulse of frailty, such as a second moment for
consideration would have resisted, but which unhappily had been
followed by no such opportunity of retrieval? I had heard of such
things. Cases there were in our own times (and not confined to one
nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known to have
haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ignoble and base. I ran over
some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this propensity.
More than one were the names of people in a technical sense held noble.
That, nor any other consideration abated my horror. Better, I said,
better, (because more compatible with elevation of mind,) better to
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