ead silence followed these questions.

He then mildly, but forcibly, added--"What have you to say?"

Here a flood of tears burst from her eyes, which she fixed earnestly upon
him, as if pleading for mercy, while she faintly articulated,

"Nothing, my lord."

After a short pause, he asked her, in the same forcible but benevolent
tone--

"Have you no one to speak to your character?" The prisoner answered--

A second gush of tears followed this reply, for she called to mind by
_whom_ her character had first been blasted.

He summed up the evidence; and every time he was compelled to press hard
upon the proofs against her she shrunk, and seemed to stagger with the
deadly blow; writhed under the weight of _his_ minute justice, more than
from the prospect of a shameful death.

The jury consulted but a few minutes. The verdict was--

"Guilty."

She heard it with composure.

But when William placed the fatal velvet on his head, and rose to
pronounce her sentence, she started with a kind of convulsive motion;
retreated a step or two back, and, lifting up her hands, with a scream
exclaimed--

"Oh! not from _you_!"

The piercing shriek which accompanied these words prevented their being
heard by part of the audience; and those who heard them thought little of
their meaning, more than that they expressed her fear of dying.

Serene and dignified, as if no such exclamation had been uttered, William
delivered the fatal speech, ending with, "Dead, dead, dead."

She fainted as he closed the period, and was carried back to prison in a
swoon; while he adjourned the court to go to dinner.

CHAPTER XLI.

If, unaffected by the scene he had witnessed, William sat down to dinner
with an appetite, let not the reader conceive that the most distant
suspicion had struck his mind of his ever having seen, much less
familiarly known, the poor offender whom he had just condemned. Still
this forgetfulness did not proceed from the want of memory for Agnes. In
every peevish or heavy hour passed with his wife, he was sure to think of
her: yet it was self-love, rather than love of _her_, that gave rise to
these thoughts: he felt the lack of female sympathy and tenderness to
soften the fatigue of studious labour; to sooth a sullen, a morose
disposition--he felt he wanted comfort for himself, but never once
considered what were the wants of Agnes.

In the chagrin of a barren bed, he sometimes thought, too, even on the
child