However all that may be, it is certain that few people had been more completely wretched--and she was not a person to be so, without seeming so too--than Maria Beauchamp, since the business at Ryebury had taken place, and she yielded to a degree of gloom and despondency, which Lord Ashborough had never before seen her display under any circumstances. As she never mingled in the conversation regarding William Delaware, the earl imagined that anxiety and suspense, in regard to the fate of her brother, were the causes of her gloom; and--with the very natural consideration which people generally display, who, however much grieved they may feel for a time, love to get over the memory of their dead relations as fast as may be--the noble earl took every means of removing her state of doubt as fast as possible, by assuring her, on all occasions, that unquestionably her brother was dead. Suddenly a change came over Miss Beauchamp's whole demeanour. Though she admitted that it was very possible her brother might be dead, yet she resumed her usual tone of spirits; and instead of being silent in regard to Captain Delaware, she repelled with contempt the idea of his guilt whenever it was mentioned, declaring that she felt as much confidence in his innocence of the murder, as she did in her own. All this surprised Lord Ashborough. The first, indeed, he accounted for pleasantly enough to himself, declaring that Maria's mind had now recovered its elasticity, having been relieved from suspense, by the firm conviction which he had taken care to impress upon it, that her brother was dead. He lauded at the same time, be it remarked, his own wisdom in the course he had pursued, blaming severely those ill-judging friends, who, in such cases, suffer hope to linger on till it wears itself out. He even ventured on a simile, saying, that it was like torturing a drowning man, by holding out straws to him. In regard to Miss Beauchamp's extraordinary perversity in defending the murderer, he declared that he was more puzzled; and one day, after having remonstrated severely, he related the fact to the worthy Mr. Peter Tims. That excellent person, however, only decided that it was a lady's caprice; and with this solution of the enigma, his lordship was forced to rest satisfied. In the meanwhile, Henry Beauchamp did the most uninteresting thing in the whole world, namely, he travelled from Calais to Paris; for, with the exception of Sterne, who carried his own world about with him in his post-chaise--and a strange mixed world of beauty and deformity it was--I know no one who has been able to make anything of the journey between those two towns, either one way or the other--except, indeed, the Duke of Guise, in 1558, who made Calais a French town of it.