l-assorted match she had made, and in her excitable mind, "she
cursed the bond which connected her with a man whose social position
she despised, and whose occupations she scorned." The report, however,
of her uncommon beauty, could not fail to reach the ears of young Lord
Forrester, who on the score of relationship was often attracted to
Mrs. Nimmo's house. At first he was received with coldness, but, by
flattering and appealing to her vanity, he gradually "accomplished the
ruin of this unhappy young woman," and made her the victim of his
licentious and unprincipled designs.

But no long time had elapsed when this shameful intrigue became the
subject of common talk, and public indignation took the side of the
injured woman, when Lord Forrester, after getting tired of her, "was
so cruel and base as to speak of her openly in the most opprobrious
manner," even alluding to her criminal connection with him. In so
doing, however, he had not taken into consideration the violent
character of the woman he had wronged, nor thought he of her jealousy,
wounded pride, and despair. In his haste, also, to rid himself of the
woman who no longer fascinated him, he paid no heed to the passion
that was lurking in her inflamed bosom, nor counted on her _spretae
injuria formae_.

On the other hand, whilst he was forgetting the past in his orgies,
Mrs. Nimmo--whose love for him was turned to the bitterest hate--was
hourly reproaching him, and at last the fatal moment arrived when she
felt bound to proceed to Corstorphine Castle, and confront her
evil-doer. At the time, Lord Forrester was drinking at the village
tavern, and, when the infuriated woman demanded to see him, he was
flushed with claret, and himself in no amiable mood. The altercation,
naturally, "soon became violent, bitter reproaches were uttered on the
one side, and contemptuous sneers on the other." Goaded to frenzy, the
unhappy woman stabbed her paramour to the heart, killing him
instantly.

When taken before the sheriff of Edinburgh, she confessed her crime,
and, although she told the court in the most pathetic manner how
basely she had been wronged by one who should have supported rather
than ruined her, sentence of death was passed upon her. She managed,
writes Sir Bernard Burke,[56] to postpone the execution of her
sentence by declaring that she was with child by her seducer, and
during her imprisonment succeeded in escaping in the disguise of a
young man. But she was