Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/315

 It seems that the story had flown across the town with the quickness peculiar to a scandal, that our family had been so active in the cause of the Pretender Charles, that it had gone the length of harbouring rebels at our place in Yorkshire, and had even plucked them from the custody of the Hanoverian's troops. Further, it was known that the King had refused the entrée to my father and myself, and soon a sinister rumour crept abroad to the effect that the Earl's name was to be cited in the House of Lords, he being guilty of a capital offence. Truly I found things in London to be dark indeed. It was evident from the first that it would be impossible to seek in high places for aid for the man lying under sentence of death in Newgate. It was this ulterior assistance that I had relied on wholly; and now for it to be quite beyond my reach, was a great aggravation to my miseries. Shorn of this privilege of the powerful, I knew not which way I must turn, and in a week or less was at my wits' end for an expedient. At that time my lover had only ten days to live, and here was I with nothing done. Where were my promises? The agony that was mine during those fast-slipping days I do not care to dwell on. Every hour that passed was a reproach to my futility. The suspense, the misery, the vain repinings as I searched for a means and could not find one, whilst the days all too rapidly escaped, fretted me almost to the fever-state. By night I could not sleep; yet by day I could accomplish nothing. Shunned and scorned by all who