The courage of the silent member was rather of an aspen character, and he became pale and trembled. Struggling for dignity of manner, shaking, and calling up an air of offended importance, he said he should have felt pleasure to have served him, in consideration of the kindness of his family; but added, after considerable faltering and hesitation, that he was compelled to withdraw his countenance and patronage, owing to the representations which he had heard of his habits and character, and that, in consequence, the situation he intended for him was already bestowed upon another.
“Representations regarding MY habits and character, sir?” exclaimed Alexander; “tell me who has dared to revile me.”
“My informant is a gentleman of honour and of family, one who knows you well—and beyond this I will not be braved to inform you.”
“You shall!” exclaimed Alexander.
“Never!” answered the other bitterly, and called to his servants to obtain assistance and give him into custody; and as he spoke he slid to the farther corner of the lobby. Alexander’s eyes glared upon him as a wounded lion measures its victim. There was an unearthly earnestness and determination in his manner that might have appalled a stouter heart. He grasped the trembler firmly by the arm, and in a tone more impressive than anger, slowly and solemnly inquired—“What is the name of my defamer?”
“The Honourable Edward Stafford,” stammered out the other, awed by the desperate resoluteness of his manner.
“Stafford!” exclaimed Alexander, starting back—“am I then a second time stung by a worm?—poisoned by a reptile?—Stafford!” he repeated, and hurried from the house.
He had turned aside into the Park, to conceal his agitation, indulging in the secret determination to proceed to Leicester Square and seek vengeance upon his enemy; but his gestures betrayed the agitation of his spirit, and excited the loud laughter of two horsemen who rode behind him. He turned fiercely round upon the mockers of his misery—one of them was the Honourable Edward Stafford. Alexander sprang upon him, and dragged him to the ground, as a tiger springeth upon his prey. In his fury he trampled him beneath his feet, and he lay bleeding and insensible upon the ground, when his companion, having procured the assistance of the police, Alexander was taken into custody, and, being brought before the magistrates, was committed for trial.
Wretched and disconsolate, Isabella beheld the sun of another day set, and yet she heard nothing of her husband. She had hurried from street to street, wild and restless as a household bird, which, escaped from its cage, breaks its wings and its heart, as it flutters, without aim and without rest, through the strange wilderness of liberty. Wearied with fatigue, and well nigh delirious with wretchedness, she was ready to inquire of every stranger that she met—“Have you seen my Alexander?” And again and again she returned to their silent and comfortless lodgings; but there the sound of her own sighs murmured desolation; and, in impatient agony, she exclaimed—“My husband!—my Alexander!—where shall I find him?”
She had sent messengers in every direction, and to all of whom she had heard him mention but their name; and, in her agony, her tearful eyes had wandered over the broad Thames, fearfully and eagerly surveying its shores, and following its stream for miles, till, faint and weary, she sank despairing and exhausted on the ground. A letter from her husband was at length put into her hands, which informed her that he was then a prisoner in Newgate. She immediately hastened to the gloomy prison-house, and when she arrived before it, and beheld its ponderous gates, studded with bolts of iron, and overhung with the emblems of the felon’s chain and the gibbet, she recoiled back for a few paces, and her heart failed.