owerfully with
a woman of her ladyship's known goodness of heart. But all these
representations were false, as came out when it was too late. However
she was hired. It was not known at that time,--or, if it were, only to
those who allowed it no weight in their minds,--that she was a niece of
Gillie Godber's. That perhaps of itself was not so important a fact:
but she had lived for the seven last years of her life in her aunt's
house, had fallen deeply under her influence, and shared in her
feelings with regard to the execution of the young boy her cousin.
Moving chiefly under this influence, and confirmed no doubt by the
means which suddenly offered of appropriating a very large sum of
money, this woman lent herself as the instrument to the savage
vengeance of her aunt--which in one hour laid prostrate the happy
prospects of an ancient house and ravaged their peace in a way which
time has done nothing to heal. And here it was, Mr. Bertram, that
Gillie Godber forfeited all hold on the public sympathy--even amongst
those whose rank indisposed them to judge Sir Morgan with any charity.
All hearts were steeled against her. Sir Morgan might be thought to
have done her wrong: with regard to the fact, as it ultimately came
out, he certainly had; though not, as I am sure, in design or according
to the light of his conscience at that time. But for lady Walladmor,
the meek and gentle lady that had wept with her--wept _for_
her--pleaded for her--prayed for her--knelt for her;--Gillie Godber,
that was a mother by so bitter a mother's pang, to forget the mother's
heart in her benefactress; she, that mourned for a son, to tear the
infants for ever from their mother's breasts, and consign them--oh! heart
of Herod--to a life worse than a thousand deaths amongst robbers, pirates,
murderers,--this it was that blotted out from all men's memories her
own wrongs, cancelled and tore the record of her sufferings.--Mr.
Bertram, it will be four and twenty years next summer from the date of
this miserable transaction; and yet I protest that the storm of
affliction, which in one night descended upon this ancient house of
Walladmor, was, in itself--in its origin--and its irreparable nature,
so memorable a scene of human frailty, such a monument of the awful
power for evil which is lodged in the humblest of human beings when
shaken by extremity of passion and liberated from restraints of
conscience, that at this moment the impression of all its circ