had lent her she
had eagerly perused. She was therefore to a certain extent a cultivated
person; and her speech and manners were mild, gentle, and, so to speak,
religious. I generally found, when I visited her, a Bible or prayer-book
in her hand. This, however, from my experience, comparatively slight
though it was, did not much impress me in her favor--devotional sentiment
so easily, for a brief time, assumed, being in nine such cases out of ten
a hypocritical deceit. Still she, upon the whole, made a decidedly
favorable impression on me, and I no longer so much wondered at the
bigotry of unbelief manifested by Mrs. Davies in behalf of her apparently
amiable and grateful protegee.

But beyond the moral doubt thus suggested of the prisoner's guilt, my
interviews with her utterly failed to extract anything from her in
rebutment of the charge upon which she was about to be arraigned. At
first she persisted in asserting that the prosecution was based upon
manifest error; that the impounded notes, instead of being forged, were
genuine Bank-of-England paper. It was some time before I succeeded in
convincing her that this hope, to which she so eagerly, desperately
clung, was a fallacious one. I did so at last; and either, thought I, as
I marked her varying color and faltering voice, "either you are a
consummate actress, or else the victim of some frightful delusion or
conspiracy."

"I will see you, if you please, to-morrow," she said, looking up from the
chair upon which, with her head bowed and her face covered with her
hands, she had been seated for several minutes in silence. "My thoughts
are confused now, but to-morrow I shall be more composed; better able to
decide if--to talk, I mean, of this unhappy business."

I thought it better to comply without remonstrance, and at once
took my leave.

When I returned the next afternoon, the governor of the prison informed
me that the brother of my client, James Eccles, quite a dashing
gentleman, had had a long interview with her. He had left about two hours
before, with the intention, he said, of calling upon me.

I was conducted to the room where my conferences with the prisoner
usually took place. In a few minutes she appeared, much flushed and
excited, it seemed to be alternately with trembling joy and hope, and
doubt, and nervous fear.

"Well," I said, "I trust you are now ready to give me your unreserved
confidence, without which, be assured, that any reasonable hope o