Old Sandy dies, and Alton watches by his corpse till the morning of the 10th of April, the day on which the liberties of England were to be decided, and a general muster of the adherents of the Charter held on Kensington Common. Going forth, he encounters at the door a lady dressed in deep mourning, who had come to visit Mackaye, and who should this prove to be but the widowed Countess of Ellerton! It now comes out that Alton had been altogether mistaken in her character: instead of being a proud imperious aristocrat, she proves to be a lowly, devoted, and self-sacrificing friend of the poor, who has surrendered her whole means for the relief of unfortunate needle-women, and even lived and worked among them, in order personally to experience the hardships of their condition. There is nothing in this to provoke a sneer; for it is impossible to exaggerate the extent of that sacrifice which women in all ages have been content to make, either at the call of love, the claim of duty, or the demand of religion; and the noble and unswerving heroism, which they have exhibited in the accomplishment of their task. To tend the sick and dying even in public, hospitals--to brave the pestilence and the plague--to visit prisons--utterly to abjure the world, and to give up everything for the sake of their Divine Master--all these things have been done by women, and done so quietly and unobtrusively as to escape the notice of the multitude; for good deeds are like the sweetest flowers, they blossom in the most secret places. But our author goes a great deal further, and, as usual, plunges into the ludicrous. Lady Ellerton has, from the first, recognised Alton Locke as an inspired being; she has kept her eye upon him throughout the whole of his career; has paid his debts through old Mackaye, with whom she seems to have been in constant correspondence; has supplied the means for his defence at his trial; and has now come to arrest, if possible, the headlong career of the outrageous and revolutionary tailor! We must indulge ourselves with one more extract, and it shall be the last. "'Oh!' she said, in a voice of passionate earnestness, which I had never heard from her before, 'stop--for God's sake, stop! you know not what you are saying--what you are doing. Oh! that I had met you before--that I had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye! Oh! wait, wait--there is a deliverance for you; but never in this path--never! And just while I, and nobler far than I, are longing and struggling to find the means of telling you your deliverance, you, in the madness of your haste, are making it impossible!' "There was a wild sincerity in her words--an almost imploring tenderness in her tone. "'So young!' she said; 'so young to be lost thus!'