she hurried, she found her trembling knees had sunk, and her wearied
head was reclined against the stately pillars that guarded William's
door.

At the sudden recollection where she was, a swell of passion, composed of
horror, of anger, of despair, and love, gave reanimated strength to her
failing limbs; and, regardless of her pursuer's steps, she ran to the
centre of the street, and, looking up to the windows of the mansion,
cried, "Ah! there he sleeps in quiet, in peace, in ease--he does not even
dream of me--he does not care how the cold pierces, or how the people
persecute me! He does not thank me for all the lavish love I have borne
him and his child! His heart is so hard, he does not even recollect that
it was he who brought me to ruin."

Had these miseries, common to the unhappy prostitute, been alone the
punishment of Agnes--had her crimes and sufferings ended in distress like
this, her story had not perhaps been selected for a public recital; for
it had been no other than the customary history of thousands of her sex.
But Agnes had a destiny yet more fatal. Unhappily, she was endowed with
a mind so sensibly alive to every joy, and every sorrow, to every mark of
kindness, every token of severity, so liable to excess in passion, that,
once perverted, there was no degree of error from which it would revolt.

Taught by the conversation of the dissolute poor, with whom she now
associated, or by her own observation on the worldly reward of elevated
villainy, she began to suspect "that dishonesty was only held a sin to
secure the property of the rich; and that, to take from those who did not
want, by the art of stealing, was less guilt, than to take from those who
did want, by the power of the law."

By false yet seducing opinions such as these, her reason estranged from
every moral and religious tie, her necessities urgent, she reluctantly
accepted the proposal to mix with a band of practised sharpers and
robbers, and became an accomplice in negotiating bills forged on a
country banker.

But though ingenious in arguments to excuse the deed before its
commission, in the act she had ever the dread of some incontrovertible
statement on the other side of the question. Intimidated by this
apprehension, she was the veriest bungler in her vile profession--and on
the alarm of being detected, while every one of her confederates escaped
and absconded, she alone was seized--was arrested for issuing notes they
had fabri