While sentence of death was passing on Harding, Smithson, and Sarah Ings, the head of a woman, dressed in deep mourning, pale, haggard, and agitated, but with the traces of former beauty shining through all, was seen gazing eagerly upon the judge; till at length he turned to Walter Harrison, and informed him that, at the suggestion of the king's counsel on the occasion; his sentence should be reserved for farther consideration. At those words a passionate flood of tears were seen to burst from the poor woman's eyes, which had been dry as the desert before; and she hurried eagerly from the court ere the crowd made their way toward the door.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
There are some men so highly gifted with fine and generous feelings, that they feel a sort of sympathetic excitement in the trials and behavior of murderers and highwaymen--prize the rope that hanged a noted criminal, and guard, as a relic, the implements with which some great crime was perpetrated. We own the narrowness of our own mind in these respects, and turn without reluctance for a time from the fierce and ruthless deeds of men in the last stage of human depravity, to scenes where the same passions, and perhaps the same vices, had to struggle with the bonds of education and circumstances, and were restrained to crooked and confined passages, by all the respects of rank, and station, and a well preserved name.
On the Saturday morning which succeeded the trial of Harding and his accomplices, the Earl of Ashborough sat waiting for his carriage, which was to be at his door at nine precisely, in order to whirl him and his niece down to one of his country seats, for the purpose of spending the Christmas holidays with true old English hospitality, as the newspapers term it, amidst his neighbors and tenants.
About three weeks had now elapsed since the return of his nephew and the dismissal of Mr. Tims, and agents had been appointed by the earl to examine into that worthy's accounts, in which they had hitherto made but small progress. The noble lord had in the mean while pursued his plan of speaking of his _ci-devant_ lawyer, and treating him in every respect with calm and supreme contempt. But Mr. Tims had at the same time proceeded upon his plan also; and scarcely a daily or a weekly newspaper appeared--from that which instructs and bullies the statesman, to that which sets the pot-house in a roar--that did not contain some galling allusion to the Earl of Ashborough and his private affairs.
His lordship took no notice, but still the same attack went on; and though he spoke not a word upon the business to anyone, yet it was evident that the annoyance he felt was sufficient seriously to affect his health. A physician's carriage was seen almost daily at his door; and in the end, it being discovered that the length of time he had spent that year in the dull and smoky atmosphere of London, had hurt his constitution, it was determined that he should set out for the country, and not return till his parliamentary duties absolutely compelled his attendance in the House of Peers. The carriage then was ordered, and his lordship, with his usual punctuality, was ready to the moment. The carriage, however, and his lordship's niece were any thing but ready to the moment; and the earl was sitting in attendance upon their will and pleasure, and in no very quiescent mood, when the loud clatter of a horse's feet beneath the windows broke the silence; and in a moment after, a letter, brought by express from the little county town of ----, was put into his hand, together with another, bearing his address in the handwriting of Henry Beauchamp.
The first was signed by the sheriff of the county, and went to inform him that a man of the name of Harding, having been that day, at twenty minutes after three o'clock, condemned to death for the murder at Ryebury, had expressed an earnest wish to see his lordship, and had intimated that, if he were so indulged, he would make disclosures of very great importance, and which, he believed, might even save his own life. These facts the sheriff had thought necessary to bring before his lordship, leaving him to judge whether it would be proper or not to comply with the desire of the prisoner. The letter from Beauchamp contained but a few lines, urging his uncle strongly to give immediate attention to the demand of the felon; and Lord Ashborough, in his first burst of angry impatience, threw both the epistles into the fire together.
Now, as Lord Ashborough was a man who seldom gave way to such unnecessary displays of vehemence, it was very easy to divine, from his violent demolition of the letters, that he would ultimately do what was required, whatever he might say to the contrary; for, had he not intended to go, there would not have been the slightest use of being angry about the matter.
"What could the fellow want with him?" he asked. "It was all nonsense! There could be no reason for his going down; nor could the rascal have any matter of import to relate!"
But the very fact that his lordship could by no means divine what Harding could want with him, served in the greatest degree to strengthen that principle, or passion, or folly--whichever curiosity may be termed by the learned--that now urged the earl to travel to the town of ----. By the time the carriage came up, he had got as far as to think, "Well, I suppose I must go!" and by the time Miss Beauchamp, be-cloaked and be-furred, entered the drawing-room, he had summoned resolution to say, "Had you and the carriage been ready at the time, Maria, I should have had a pleasant journey with you down to ----, instead of an unpleasant one by myself down to ----."