aminations before a whole board of magistrates: but to what end? She
was as wild as the sea, as intractable as the wind. What threats,
indeed, what voice, what sound--except it were the sound of the last
trumpet wakening her from the grave--shall ever again alarm her? What
cares she for judge or jury? The last sentence, that _she_ could fear,
rang in her ears long years ago at Walladmor. That dreadful voice, as
it sounded in the great hall of Walladmor Castle when it gave up her
blooming boy to the scaffold, still sounds in her adder's ear; and it<
is deaf to all sounds beside."

"Yet surely Sir Morgan must be distressed at seeing her: and
yesterday----"

"I know what you would say, Mr. Bertram: yesterday you saw her walking
freely about the castle. True. But, for the purposes I have already
explained, it is necessary to give her free access to the castle; and
she comes so seldom that she is now a privileged person with licence to
range where she will. Nay, Sir Morgan would court her hither with
gifts--and rain bounties upon her, if she would accept them. This
desire of having her before his eyes, Mr. Bertram, is a fantastic and
wayward expression of misery--one of those tricks of sorrow--most apt
to haunt the noblest minds. Some have worn about their persons the
symbols, the instruments, or the mementos of their guilt: and in Mrs.
Godber Sir Morgan sees a living memorial of what he now deems his crime
and of its punishment; a record (as he says himself) of his own
unpitying heart--and of the bitter judgment that recalled him to more
merciful thoughts.

"I think him right:--in the Greek tragedians, who sometimes teach us
Christians better morality than (I am sorry to say) we teach ourselves,
there is a sentiment often repeated--which I dare say, Mr. Bertram,
you remember: it is to this effect,--That it is ominous of evil to
come--for any man to express, by his words or acts, that he glories in
his own prosperity as though it were of his own creation, or held by the
tenure of his own merits. Now this is in effect the very crime of him
that, being born of woman, yet hardens his heart against the prostrate
supplications of a human brother or sister. For how would _he_ refuse
to show mercy, that did not think himself raised above the possibility
of needing it?

"Yes, Sir Morgan is right; his own sad recollections tell him that he
is; and often have I heard him say--That, from that memorable moment
when, looking back as