ould last forever. It was
dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and
that she could not hear till self-willed rivers subsided; dreadful to
know that they must subside and the news come at last.

She had some vague trust in the Judge's good nature, and much in the
resources of chance and accident. She had contrived to send the money he
wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled
support.

At last the news did come--a long arrear all in a gush: a letter from a
female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the sentences, sent up for the
Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with
great aplomb and brevity, the long-deferred intelligence of the
Shrewsbury Assizes in the _Morning Advertiser_. Like an impatient reader
of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy eyes the
list of the executions.

Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital catalogue was
this line:

"Lewis Pyneweck--forgery."

She had to read it a half-a-dozen times over before she was sure she
understood it. Here was the paragraph:

_Sentence, Death--7._

Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit:

Thomas Primer, _alias_ Duck--highway robbery. Flora Guy--stealing to
the value of 11s. 6d. Arthur Pounden--burglary. Matilda
Mummery--riot. Lewis Pyneweck--forgery, bill of exchange.

And when she reached this, she read it over and over, feeling very cold
and sick.

This buxom housekeeper was known in the house as Mrs. Carwell--Carwell
being her maiden name, which she had resumed.

No one in the house except its master knew her history. Her introduction
had been managed craftily. No one suspected that it had been concerted
between her and the old reprobate in scarlet and ermine.

Flora Carwell ran up the stairs now, and snatched her little girl,
hardly seven years of age, whom she met on the lobby, hurriedly up in
her arms, and carried her into her bedroom, without well knowing what
she was doing, and sat down, placing the child before her. She was not
able to speak. She held the child before her, and looked in the little
girl's wondering face, and burst into tears of horror.

She thought the Judge could have saved him. I daresay he could. For a
time she was furious with him, and hugged and kissed her bewildered
little girl, who returned her gaze with large round eyes.

That little girl had lost her father,