Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/182

182 The feeling with which she regarded her new duties and prospects on quitting England, was borne testimony to, and her general correspondence was dwelt upon as ample and touching evidence of the affectionate remembrance with which her friends were regarded. With respect to the more intimate relation of life, the duties of which she fulfilled with exemplary devotion—having attended her husband in his illness for nights and days together, up to the hour of her decease—the "Courier" had the joint authority of the head of her husband's family in England, and of her own nearest relative, to state, that Mr. Maclean, in his letter accompanying the intelligence of his loss, declared that his affections for her, his confidence in the qualities that ennobled her nature and endeared her to all, remained unimpaired to the latest moment; every expression he used tending to show how much she deserved to be happy, and how irreparable was his bereavement.

This appeal checked the propensity to publish, though the mystery remained to be everywhere discussed, and found fruitful of surmises in private. Measures were next adopted for clearing up, if possible, all that was obscure in the depositions, and obtaining every necessary particular of the mournful accident.

In the meantime came a calmer opportunity of considering, and examining minutely, the evidence already furnished. And hence arose a new hypothesis, which, although it rejects the verdict as inconclusive, the favourers of gloomier ones had not been struck with. Let us, with the view of examining it, recur to the depositions.

In the first place, the reader will not fail to observe, that no one circumstance or expression