If there was excitement before, there was ten times more excitement now, and the crier found great difficulty in reducing all present to silence. There was a sudden pause in the noise, and the prisoner, raising her eyes to heaven, said in a solemn voice--
"It is true! I am innocent of this crime. He has fallen himself into the pit he digged for another."
Yes, she was innocent, and the man who accused her guilty; but when they looked for Dombrain, in order to arrest him, he had disappeared--vanished into the depths of mighty London, when he heard his name coupled with that of murder.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
EXPIATION.
What fools are they who think God ever sleeps,
Or views their follies with a careless eye.
Fortune may heap her favours on their heads.
Blithe Pleasure lull them with her jingling bells,
And life for them be one long carnival;
But in their triumph of prosperity,
When all the smiling future seems serene,
God; frowning, stretches out His mighty arm,
And lo! the hungry grave gapes at their feet.
So Mrs. Belswin was delivered from her great peril, and was taken home by Kaituna and her lover with great rejoicing. Maxwell, indeed, after hearing the story of this woman, had hesitated for a moment as to whether he ought to let her be with her daughter, seeing that she had forfeited her maternal rights by her own act, but when he hinted this to Kaituna she rebuked him with one sentence--
"She is my mother."
So Maxwell held his peace, and after Mrs. Belswin had been released from her position of ignominy and shame, he had escorted both mother and daughter to their lodgings. There he left them, and at Mrs. Belswin's request, went to seek for Belk, and bring him there to receive the thanks of the woman he had saved. Having departed on his errand, Kaituna sat down beside her mother, in order to hear from her own lips the story of her sad life.
With many sobs, Mrs. Belswin told the whole pitiful story of her sin, which had brought her to such a bitter repentance, and, when she had ended, fell weeping at the feet of the daughter she feared now would despise her. Ah! she little knew the tenderness which the girl had cherished for her mother, and which she cherished for her even now, when the dead saint had changed into the living sinner. Pitifully--tenderly she raised her mother from her abject position of sorrow, and kissed away the bitter tears of shame and agony that fell down the hollow cheeks.