"Heaven help us!" cried Arabella, "that men of station and education, from amongst the once famed gentlemen of England, should dip their hands in such foul and horrible things!"
"Ay, lady," continued Ida Mara, "but there are higher heads still against which the charge is levelled. He who was lately my Lord of Rochester, now Earl of Somerset, with his fair but wicked Countess, are both imprisoned here, as those who set the others on to commit the terrible deed. Their trial is expected every day, and the King vows they shall have no mercy, though men think it somewhat strange that Sir Thomas Monson, the chief agent of the Countess, was yesterday, in the midst of his trial, carried from the bar by the yeomen of the Tower, and the whole proceedings against him stopped."
"Indeed!" cried Arabella; "indeed! that is very strange. But when the innocent are punished, as I have been, for no offence, we need not wonder that the guilty escape. So will it be with Somerset, Ida," she continued; "the King will not dare, I fear, to strike at one who may possess more secrets than either you or I ever dreamed of."
"At all events, dear lady," answered Ida, "his favour at the Court is gone; and, as I cannot but think that to him you owe much of the persecution you have endured, your appeals to the King for justice may have more attention, now that his influence is at an end."
"True, true," cried Arabella, starting up with a look of joy: "I never thought of that. Oh, God of Heaven, grant it!--Quick, bring me paper, dear girl. I will write to the King at once. Perhaps he will listen to me now;" and she sat down and composed one of those touching epistles to James, which have more than once brought tears into the eyes of those who read them, even in these far-removed times.
For several days the events which we have mentioned gave her hope; but the heartless tyrant whom she addressed paid no attention to her petition. Days, hours, weeks slipped away without the slightest change. The guilty Somerset and his beautiful fiend were brought to trial, judged, and condemned; and then the favour of their vicious sovereign stepped in, and saved them from the death they merited! But poor Arabella derived no benefit from the fall of two beings, who, if there had been justice in the land, should have expiated on the scaffold the manifold crimes too clearly proved against them.
A more terrible fate than death, indeed, awaited them. Sent from the Court to an estate in the country, to which they were bound to confine themselves, their dark and criminal love was soon turned to the most deadly hatred. The intense impression of each other's guilt rendered their mutual abhorrence, and its consequences, almost as horrible as their passion and the events which it produced. Living in the same house, seeing each other daily, they dwelt together as strangers, and when the one crossed the path of the other, looks of enmity and scorn came upon those two fair countenances, where once had shone the eager fire of vicious love. Thus passed many a year of painful existence, with the awful prospect of death and retribution before them, till a strange and terrible disease swept the woman from the earth, and her husband fell lingering into the grave.
With Arabella the last hope faded away, when she found that no change in the Court and councils of the King produced any favourable result to her; and with it the powers of life seemed gradually to sink. Slowly, but sadly, the last hour approached, with all the terrible concomitants of weary sickness and wandering intellect; and the two or three faithful friends, who now almost daily visited her, saw, with mingled grief and relief, that the period of her sufferings would not be long protracted.
One of the most constant of these was good Sir Harry West, in whose conversation she seemed to find more consolation and comfort than in that of any one else, except Ida Mara. With him she was always tranquil, and generally collected. Their conversation was constantly about her husband; and the good old Knight, though he did not strive to buoy her up with those earthly hopes which he knew would prove false, dwelt upon those higher and less frail assurances of happiness at some future period, which suited well his years and character, and harmonized also with Arabella's feelings.
On the subject of religion, which was her greatest blessing and comfort now in the hour of her dark adversity, her mind was always as clear and bright, as in those days when, in intellect and virtue, she stood in the midst of a Court, superior to the allurements of the idle vanity and pitiful ambition that characterized it; but on every other subject, reason often failed.