She turned to Sir George Neville, with a sweet smile. "The noble heart
sees base things noble. No wonder then an artful woman deluded _you_. He
has left England with her, and condemned me to the gallows, in cold
blood. So be it. I shall defend myself."

She then sat down with Mr. Houseman, and went through the written case
he had prepared for her, and showed him notes she had taken of full a
hundred criminal trials great and small.

While they were putting their heads together, Sir George sat in a brown
study, and uttered not a word. Presently he got up a little brusquely,
and said, "I'm going to Hernshaw."

"What, at this time of night? What to do?"

"To obey my orders. To drain the mere."

"And who could have ordered you to drain my mere?"

"Mercy Vint."

Sir George uttered this in a very curious way, half ashamed, half
resolute, and retired before Mrs. Gaunt could vent in speech the
surprise and indignation that fired her eye.

Houseman implored her not to heed Sir George and his vagaries, but to
bend her whole mind on those approved modes of defence with which he had
supplied her.

Being now alone with her, he no longer concealed his great anxiety.

"We have lost an invaluable witness in that woman," said he. "I was mad
to think she would come."

Mrs. Gaunt shivered with repugnance. "I would not have her come, for all
the world," said she. "For Heaven's sake never mention her name to me. I
want help from none but friends. Send Mrs. Houseman to me in the
morning; and do not distress yourself so. I shall defend myself far
better than you think. I have not studied a hundred trials for naught."

Thus the prisoner cheered up her attorney, and soon after insisted on
his going home to bed; for she saw he was worn out by his exertions.

And now she was alone.

All was silent.

A few short hours, and she was to be tried for her life: tried, not by
the All-wise Judge, but by fallible men, and under a system most
unfavorable to the accused.

Worse than all this, she was a Papist; and, as ill-luck would have it,
since her imprisonment an alarm had been raised that the Pretender
meditated another invasion. This report had set jurists very much
against all the Romanists in the country, and had already perverted
justice in one or two cases, especially in the North.

Mrs. Gaunt knew all this, and trembled at the peril to come.

She spent the early part of the night in studying her defence. Then she
laid i