Mrs. Gaunt was conveyed back to prison, and there was soon prostrated by the depression that follows an unnatural excitement.
Mr. Houseman found her on the sofa, pale and dejected, and clasping the gaoler's wife convulsively, who applied hartshorn to her nostrils.
He proved but a Job's comforter. Her defense, creditable as it was to a novice, seemed wordy and weak to him, a lawyer: and he was horrified at the admissions she had made. In her place he would have admitted nothing he could not throughly explain.
He came to insist on a change of tactics.
When he saw her sad condition, he tried to begin by consoling, and encouraging her. But his own serious misgivings unfitted him for this task, and very soon, notwithstanding the state she was in, he was almost scolding her for being so mad as to withstand the judge, and set herself against his advice. "There," said he, "my lord kept his word, and became counsel for you. 'Close that gap in your defense,' says he, 'and you will very likely be acquitted.' 'Nay,' says you, 'I prefer to chance it.' What madness! what injustice!"
"Injustice! to whom?"
"To whom? why, to yourself."
"What, may I not be unjust to myself?"
"Certainly not; you have no right to be unjust to anybody. Don't deceive yourself; there is no virtue in this: it is mere miserable weakness. What right have you to peril an innocent life merely to screen the malefactor from just obloquy?"
"Alas!" said Mrs. Gaunt, "'tis more than obloquy. They will kill him; they will brand him with a hot iron."