The curate applauded the dean’s sagacity; a warrant was issued, and Agnes brought prisoner before the grandfather of her child.
She appeared astonished at the peril in which she found herself. Confused, also, with a thousand inexpressible sensations which the dean’s presence inspired, she seemed to prevaricate in all she uttered. Accused of this prevarication, she was still more disconcerted; said, and unsaid; confessed herself the mother of the infant, but declared she did not know, then owned she did know, the name of the man who had undone her, but would never utter it. At length she cast herself on her knees before the father of her betrayer, and supplicated “he would not punish her with severity, as she most penitently confessed her fault, so far as is related to herself.”
While Mr. and Mrs. Norwynne, just entered on the honeymoon, were sitting side by side enjoying with peace and with honour conjugal society, poor Agnes, threatened, reviled, and sinking to the dust, was hearing from the mouth of William’s father the enormity of those crimes to which his son had been accessory. She saw the mittimus written that was to convey her into a prison—saw herself delivered once more into the hands of constables, before her resolution left her, of concealing the name of William in her story. She now, overcome with affright, and thinking she should expose him still more in a public court, if hereafter on her trial she should be obliged to name him—she now humbly asked the dean to hear a few words she had to say in private, where she promised she “would speak nothing but the truth.”
This was impossible, he said—“No private confessions before a magistrate! All must be done openly.”
She urged again and again the same request: it was denied more peremptorily than at first. On which she said—“Then, sir, forgive me, since you force me to it, if I speak before Mr. Rymer and these men what I would for ever have kept a secret if I could. One of your family is my child’s father.”
“Any of my servants?” cried the dean.
“No.”
“My nephew?”
“No; one who is nearer still.”
“Come this way,” said the dean; “I will speak to you in private.”