ly laughed at the denouement,
and seemed altogether unconcerned about the matter. This, to his
lordship in particular, appeared to be a confirmation of guilt; and he
immediately ordered her person to be secured, evidence of her guilt to
be made out, and a criminal trial to be instituted. When the full truth
dawned upon poor Phebe, she sat as one would do who is vainly
endeavouring to recollect something which has escaped his memory. Her
colour left her; she was pale as Parian marble; her eyes became dim, and
her ears sang; she fainted; and it was not till after great and repeated
exertion that she was recovered, through the usual painful steps, to a
perception of the outward world. She looked wildly around her. Lady
D---- was standing with her handkerchief at her eyes--she had wept
aloud.

"O Phebe," said her ladyship, "are you guilty of this?"

Phebe repeated the word "guilty" twice, looked wildly on Lady D----'s
eyes, and then, in an unsettled and alarmed manner, all round the room.

"Guilty!" she repeated--"Guilty of what? Who is guilty? It is not he. I
am sure he could not be guilty. Oh, no--no--no--he is my father, my
friend, my protector, my minny, my dear, dear minny--he could not do it!
he never did it! You are all wrong!--and my poor, poor, head, is
odd--odd--odd." Thus saying, she clasped her forehead in a frenzied
manner, and nature again came to her relief in a second pause of
insensibility, from which she only recovered to indicate that her
remaining faculties had seemingly left her. Time, however, gradually
awakened her to a perception of the sad reality; and it was from a
chamber in the castle, to which she was confined, that she wrote the
following letter to her original and kind protector:--

"OH, MY EVER DEAR FRIEND--Your Phebe is accused of--I cannot write
it, I cannot bear to look at the horrid word--of stealing. Oh, that
you had let me lie where the wickedness of an unknown parent
exposed my helplessness to the random tread of the passenger! Oh,
come and see me; I grow positively confused; your Phebe is
imprisoned in her own chamber; but my poor head is swimming
again--there--there--I see everybody whirling about on the chimney
tops--there they go--there they go! I can only see to write
PHEBE."

There was no date to this sad scrawl; but it needed none; for in
twenty-four hours after it had arrived a