Houseman implored her not to heed Sir George and his vagaries, but to bend her whole mind on those approved modes of defense 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 nought."
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 juries 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.