“P.S.—Mr. Ripshaw has promised to send you this letter this evening. He tells me you have often inquired for me.”
The chaplain of the gaol was a friend of Mrs. Cobbold’s; she wrote a note to him requesting him to accompany her at any hour most convenient to himself, to see her poor servant. At eleven o’clock the next day, the interview took place between the wretched culprit and this truly Christian lady. She spent some hours with that disconsolate being, whose whole thoughts seemed to be directed with bitter agony to days of past happiness. For though she had endured much mortification in early life, she had experienced the comfort and consolation of a true and disinterested friend and benefactress in the person of that kind mistress, and her naturally intelligent mind had duly appreciated these benefits.
These visits were repeated many times, and with the most beneficial effects on the mind of the culprit. Her present anguish was the keener, because her sensibilities were all so acutely alive to the memory of the past. It was her mistress’s endeavour not to suffer her to be deceived with any false hopes. She was well aware that the penalty of her crime was death, and that unless her instigating accomplice could be delivered up to justice, she stood every chance of being made a public example, on account of the great frequency of the crime. To such an extent had horse-stealing been carried on in the counties of Suffolk and Essex, that scarce a week passed without rewards being offered for the apprehension of the thieves.
Margaret’s interviews with her father and brother were still more deeply affecting: but to them and to her beloved mistress alone did she make known the real circumstances, attending her stealing the horse. She did not attempt, however, to defend the act, nor would she admit that another’s influence was any exculpation of her offence. Mr. Stebbing, the surgeon of the gaol, who had been her first friend in Ipswich, was very kind to her, as was likewise his benevolent daughter, who lent her many useful books. But the being she most wished to see, and from whose memory she had never thought she could have been displaced, came not near her in her adversity. William Laud had been at Nacton, to see her father and brother. The report of her confession had reached him—he had seen it in the newspapers; and it altered all his views and intentions respecting her; so that the very act which she had done in the hope of strengthening his attachment to her, was the direct cause of his deserting her. In fact, he believed that she had committed the act from an attachment to somebody else, and he gave up all idea of her for the future.
But Margaret was still true to him. In one of her interviews with Mrs. Cobbold, that kind and good lady, referring to the fact of Laud’s not coming near her in her adversity, said earnestly—
“You must endeavour to think less of him, Margaret.”
“It is hard, madam,” was the reply, “for flesh and blood not to think of one who has been in one’s thoughts so many years of one’s life. In happy as well as miserable hours, I have thought of him, madam, and have always hoped for the best. He is still in all my prayers!”
“Your hopes of him, Margaret, must now be at an end. It would have been happier for you, if they ended when you lived with me.”
“Perhaps so, good lady; perhaps so. Or even earlier. I think now of my poor sister Susan’s last words: ‘Margaret, you will never marry William Laud.’ I had hoped that these words were only the fears of the moment; but, alas! I perceive they will prove too true!”
The only diversion of Margaret’s mind at this period, from a fixed and undivided attention to heavenly things, was the one hope of seeing Laud. She clung with tenacity to this, as a sort of last farewell to all things in the world. She said, that had she but one interview with him, she should then have no other wish but to die.