's diagnosis; by their orders Mary was that evening
confined to her chamber, a guard was placed over her, and her keys,
papers, "and all instruments wherewith she could hurt either herself
or any other person" were taken from her. Dr. Addington graphically
describes the scene when the guilty woman realised that all was
lost. She protested that from the first she had been basely deceived
by Cranstoun, that she had never put powder in anything her father
swallowed, excepting the gruel drunk by him on the Monday and
Tuesday nights, that she believed it "would make him kind to him
[Cranstoun] and her," and that she did not know it to be poison
"_till she had seen its effects_." She declined to assist in
bringing her lover to justice--she considered him as her husband,
"though the ceremony had not passed between them." In reply to
further pertinent questions, e.g., whether she really pretended to
believe in the childish business of the "love philtre"? why
Cranstoun described it, if innoxious, as "powder to clean the
pebbles with"? why, in view of her father's grave condition, she
failed sooner to call in medical aid? and why she had concealed from
him (Addington) what she knew to be the true cause of the illness?
her answers were not such, says Dr. Addington, as gave him any
satisfaction. She made, however, the highly damaging admission that,
about six weeks before, she had put some of the powder into her
father's tea, which Susan Gunnell drank and was ill for a week
after. This was said in presence of Betty Binfield. Thus, it will be
observed, Mary Blandy, on her own showing knew, long before she
operated upon, the gruel at all, the baneful effects of the powder.
Her statement that the motive for administering it was to make her
father "kind" both to _herself_ and Cranstoun should also be, in
view of her subsequent defence, remembered.

On Tuesday, the 13th, the doctors found their patient delirious and
"excessively weak." He grew worse throughout the day; but next
morning he regained consciousness for an hour, and spoke of making
his will in a day or two--a characteristic touch. He soon relapsed,
however, and rapidly sinking, died at two o'clock in the afternoon
of Wednesday, 14th August, 1751. So the end for which, trampling
upon the common instincts of her kind and hardening her heart
against the cry of Nature, she had so persistently and horribly
striven, was at last attained--with what contentment to "The Fair
Parric