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
perfect rapture of alarm, the too plausible appearance of probability
amongst the circumstances, would be likely to pause, and with attorney-
like dexterity, to pick out the particular circumstance that might
admit of being _proved_ to be false, when the conscience
proclaimed, though in despondence for the result, that all the
circumstances were, as to the use made of them, one tissue of
falsehoods. Agnes, who had made a powerful effort in speaking of the
case at all, found her calmness increase as she advanced; and she now
told me, that in reality there were two discoveries which she made in
the same instant, and not one only, which had disarmed her firmness and
ordinary presence of mind. One I have mentioned--the fact of Barratt,
the proprietor of the shop, being the same person who had in former
instances persecuted her in the street; but the other was even more
alarming--it has been said already that it was _not_ a pure matter
of accident that she had visited this particular shop. In reality, that
nursery-maid, of whom some mention has been made above, and in terms
expressing the suspicion with which even then I regarded her, had
persuaded her into going thither by some representations which Agnes
had already ascertained to be altogether unwarranted. Other