CHAPTER XII. "My resolution's placed, and I have nothing I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon "GRACE must be mad, my love," remarked "She is quite beyond all hearkening to reason," replied Blanch. "In truth, I cannot again make the attempt to persuade her from the course she is taking. The pain that it causes both of us is such, that to prevent a useless recurrence I promised, to her urgent and almost peremptory request, not to name the subject again." rejoined aunt "But, my dear child," Deborah, "she must not be allowed to throw herself away in this fashion. Great heaven!" exclaimed she, "think of its being talked and prattled by every tongue throughout the county that Grace Wells, the daughter of a clergyman-and such a clergyman—and a magistrate withal, is moonstruck by this incorrigible scamp, branded rogue, and proverbial outlaw, Ned Swiftfoot! Upon my word, Blanch," continued she, with a slight interval to regain a considerable loss of breath from her unusual energetic delivery, "I could almost give the perverse, hot-brained thing a good spank on her ear. I could indeed." "It is truly melancholy to reflect upon," returned Blanch; "but quite out of our power to control. To all and to everything represented by her father, Ellen, myself, you, Mr Merton, Charles, and others who have ventured to address Grace upon the subject, she returns the same reply, and it is quite hopeless to expect now that she will give any other." "The perverse, obstinate minx!" ejaculated aunt Deborah, losing all patience at the thought. "Isn't the wretch going to be hung for murder? And what is the use, I should like to know, of any rational creature's being in love with a man who is going to be hung?" "Grace is quite sanguine in the belief that he will not be," replied her niece, "and is fully persuaded that the explanation given of his being discovered with the corpse of poor Mary is the true and just one." "And if it be, my love," rejoined aunt Deborah with a quivering lip-for she could never think of Mary without shedding a tear VOL. II. I -"and if it be, my love," repeated the old lady, stopping two briny drops stealing down her cheeks, "the scoundrel merits hanging for treating the poor dear thing in such a manner. I'd have him hanged only for that -that's what I would!" "He does not attempt to justify that part of his conduct, I hear," returned Blanch. "Indeed, no one can be louder in upbraiding him for the committed wrong than he is himself." "That is, certainly, an approach to an extenuation of it," added aunt Deborah. "To confess our errors and manifold wickednesses, we are told, child, is a great step towards obtaining forgiveness of them." "And without a question," said Blanch, "we are told correctly." "Yes, my dear, yes,” replied the old lady. "It's a maxim, I may say, without intending to laud my little tin-pot ways through life, that I've always acted up to. When a girl and a particularly disagreeable girl I wasI never, by any chance, purloined a bit of sugar from the caddy, or dipped my finger into the currant jelly-pots, but that I immediately confessed the fault." Blanch smiled at aunt Deborah's simplicity and confession, and, after a pause, said—“I am of the same opinion that Grace is concerning the charge against Edward Macrone. I do not believe him guilty of murder." Well, well!" said the old lady, softened in her asperity against the outlaw, now that she was told he had admitted the error of his "Let us lean to the side of mercy, ways. and hope that he may not be." "In that case I think we should render him assistance in obtaining the means of clearing himself of the imputation," remarked Blanch, "and not leave Grace to be the only mover in his behalf." Any step that we might take to render assistance," returned her aunt, "would, I |