"My shame would be public. I must tell who I am; and what. A ruined woman."
"Say rather an injured saint. You have nothing to be ashamed of. All good men would feel for you."
Mercy shook her head. "Ay, but the women. Shame is shame with us. Right or wrong goes for little. Nay, I hope to do better for you than that. I must find him, and send him to deliver her. 'Tis his only chance of happiness."
She then asked him if he would draw up an advertisement of quite a different kind from those he had described to her.
He assented, and between them they concocted the following:—
"If Thomas Leicester, who went from the 'Packhorse' two months ago, will come thither at once, Mercy will be much beholden to him, and tell him strange things that have befallen."
Sir George then, at her request, rode over to Lancaster, and inserted the above in the county paper, and also in a small sheet that was issued in the city three times a week. He had also handbills to the same effect printed, and sent into Cumberland and Westmoreland. Finally, he sent a copy to his man of business in London, with orders to insert it in all the journals.
Then he returned to the "Packhorse," and told Mercy what he had done.
The next day he bade her farewell, and away for Carlisle. It was a two days' journey. He reached Carlisle in the evening, and went all glowing to Mrs. Gaunt. "Madam," said he, "be of good cheer. I bless the day I went to see her; she is an angel of wit and goodness."
He then related to her, in glowing terms, most that had passed between Mercy and him. But, to his surprise, Mrs. Gaunt wore a cold, forbidding air.