for the prosecution, and I hastened home to administer such consolation
to Arthur Rushton as might consist in the assurance of my firm conviction
that his beloved mother's life had not been wilfully taken away by
Eugenie de Tourville. I found him still painfully agitated; and the
medical attendant told me it was feared by Dr. ---- that brain fever
would supervene if the utmost care was not taken to keep him as quiet and
composed as, under the circumstances, was possible. I was, however,
permitted a few minutes' conversation with him; and my reasoning, or,
more correctly, my confidently-expressed belief--for his mind seemed
incapable of following my argument, which it indeed grasped faintly at,
but slipped from, as it were, in an instant--appeared to relieve him
wonderfully. I also promised him that no legal or pecuniary assistance
should be wanting in the endeavor to clear Mademoiselle de Tourville of
the dreadful imputation preferred against her. I then left him. The
anticipation of the physician was unfortunately realized: the next
morning he was in a raging fever, and his life, I was informed, was in
very imminent danger.

It was a distracting time; but I determinedly, and with much self-effort,
kept down the nervous agitation which might have otherwise rendered me
incapable of fulfilling the duties I had undertaken to perform. By
eleven o'clock in the forenoon I had secured the active and zealous
services of Mr. White, one of the most celebrated of the criminal
attorneys of that day. By application in the proper quarter, we obtained
immediate access to the prisoner, who was temporarily confined in a
separate room in the Red-Lion Square Lock-up House. Mademoiselle de
Tourville, although exceedingly pale, agitated, and nervous, still looked
as lustrously pure, as radiantly innocent of evil thought or deed, as on
the day that I first beheld her. The practiced eye of the attorney
scanned her closely. "As innocent of this charge," he whispered, "as you
or I." I tendered my services to the unfortunate young lady with an
earnestness of manner which testified more than any words could have done
how entirely my thoughts acquitted her of offence. Her looks thanked me;
and when I hinted at the promise exacted of me by Arthur Rushton, a
bright blush for an instant mantled the pale marble of her cheeks and
forehead, indicating with the tears, which suddenly filled and trembled
in her beautiful eyes, a higher sentiment, I thought