Her proud head was bowed almost to her knees, and her streaming eyes hidden in her lovely hands. For why? A mob accompanied her for miles, shouting, "Murderess!—Bloody Papist!—Hast done to death the kindliest gentleman in Cumberland. We'll all come to see thee hanged.—Fair face but foul heart!"—and groaning, hissing, and cursing, and indeed only kept from violence by the escort.
And so they took that poor proud lady and lodged her in Carlisle jail.
She was enceinte into the bargain. By the man she was to be hanged for murdering.
CHAPTER XL.
The county was against her, with some few exceptions. Sir George Neville and Mr. Houseman stood stoutly by her.
Sir George's influence and money obtained her certain comforts in jail; and, in that day, the law of England was so far respected in a jail that untried prisoners were not thrown into cells, nor impeded, as they now are, in preparing their defence.
Her two stanch friends visited her every day, and tried to keep her heart up.
But they could not do it. She was in a state of dejection bordering upon lethargy.
"If he is dead," said she, "what matters it? If, by God's mercy, he is alive still, he will not let me die for want of a word from him. Impatience hath been my bane. Now, I say, God's will be done. I am weary of the world."
Houseman tried every argument to rouse her out of this desperate frame of mind; but in vain.