“Miss Leaton, dear, here is your cousin, Mr. Montrose, come to see you. Won’t you turn and look at him?”
The name of Malcolm broke the spell of dumb despair that bound her. Starting up, she caught the hands of her cousin in both her own, and gazing in an agony of supplication in his face, she exclaimed:
“Oh, Malcolm, save me from this fate! No one will save me unless you do!”
He dropped upon his knees beside the bed, and bowed his head upon her clinging hands, and answered, in a broken voice:
“Eudora, all that man can do shall be done to save you! I would pour out my heart’s best blood to deliver you.”
“Malcolm,” she exclaimed, still clinging to his hands as the drowning cling to the last plank, and gazing down on his bowed face, with her eyes dilated and blazing between wild terror and mad hope, “Malcolm, I did not do what they say I must die for! you know I did not! Oh, surely there must be some way to prove it—some way that you can find out! Oh, Malcolm! try—try hard to save me from this fate! Oh! do not think that I am a coward, Malcolm! It is not death I fear. I should not dread dying in my bed with some devoted friend beside me, as sweet Agatha died! But to be hung! to die a violent, struggling, shameful death, with all the people looking at me!—oh! for Heaven’s sake, Malcolm, save me from such maddening horror!”
“Eudora! child! love! it is not necessary for you to urge me so earnestly. I would give my body to be burned if that would save you! and all that human power can accomplish shall be tried to deliver you. I have not been idle since your conviction. Already I have set on foot a scheme by which I hope to serve you!” replied Malcolm.
“Oh, Malcolm, devoted friend, before you came in I feared that even God had forsaken me, but now I do not think so. Your plan, dear friend, what is it?”
Mr. Montrose had not intended to tell her of his mission to London, lest he should only raise false hopes; but it was not possible to behold her agonizing terror of pain and shame, or hear her earnest appeals for comfort and deliverance, without immediately responding and yielding her hope.
“I have a petition drawn up, praying the Crown to respite you during her Majesty’s pleasure; I shall take the petition to London and lay it before the Home Secretary. If he favors it, as I hope, and trust, and believe he will, it will give us time to investigate this dark mystery, discover the criminal and deliver you.”