And how did Eudora pass the few anxious days of imprisonment preceding her trial?
Oh, Heaven! how much the human heart may bear, and yet live on! Who can compute the amount of sorrow, humiliation and terror that formed the great weight of anguish that pressed her young heart almost to death?
Deep, poignant grief for the loss of her nearest and dearest kindred; burning shame at the infamous charge under which she suffered, and shuddering horrors at the awful doom that darkly lowered over her.
Either of these passionate emotions singly was enough to have crushed her heart or crazed her brain. All of them at once she was fated to endure.
Often, as with closed eyes and laboring lungs she lay upon the narrow bed of her prison-cell, she thought that her fainting heart must stop, and her gasping breath cease forever. Often she hoped that they might. And thus, indeed, her light of life might have been smothered beneath its weight of anguish, but for the tender care of those few devoted friends who cherished the dying flame.
Malcolm Montrose, Counsellor Fenton, Mr. Anderson and Mrs. Barton, all endeavored in every possible way to comfort, cheer, sustain and strengthen Eudora.
She was seldom left alone for half an hour during the day.
The devoted love of her betrothed gave her consolation; the confident manner of her advocate inspired her with hope; the zealous friendship of the governor filled her with gratitude, and the constant attention of her wardress left her little time for brooding melancholy.
And thus passed the days that brought the fatal Monday for the opening of the assizes.
That Monday on which those assizes were held will long be remembered in Abbeytown.