"Do not, do not look!" said Mrs. Dorothea, bending across, and interposing herself between Lady Arden and the view of the dock. But Lady Arden had already covered her face, naturally shrinking from the fearful trial of seeing her son enter. Alfred appeared. He was aware that a great portion of those present must be persons well known to him. He had no reason to shrink from the scrutinizing gaze of any one. With quiet dignity, therefore, on his first entrance, he looked all round the court, and few were found who had callousness to resist his mild, calm, clear eye, the expression of which was rather an appeal to the better feelings of humanity than that angry defiance of his accusers, which his circumstances might have almost justified; and which, perhaps, even he would have experienced, had not solemn and tender regret for the fact itself of his brother's untimely death, softened and subdued his feelings. Such was the immediate effect, both of his countenance and his noble bearing in every respect, as far removed from guilty hardness as from guilty fear, that many who had on hearsay condemned now in their hearts acquitted him. We speak chiefly of the impression made on persons in Sir Alfred's own sphere in life; that, however, which was produced upon a much larger body, the respectable yeomanry of the county, and tradesmen of the town, was in general very different. Among these a doctrine had been artfully promulgated, which though in itself perfectly just, was in this instance, well calculated to prejudice the judgment, namely, that if gentlemen will commit crimes worthy of ignominious punishment it is the duty of those in whose hands the administration of justice is entrusted, to show them that there is not one law for the rich and another for the poor. It is not because a gentleman can get ninety thousand a-year by murdering his brother that he is to be allowed to do so with impunity, when a poor man, who sees his wife and children starving and steals a sheep to feed them, must be hanged! This popular proposition, in the abstract so perfectly just, Fips had at the very first given out, as a sort of text to preach from, to one or two vulgar, vehement, levelling friends of his own; and from that moment affected himself, as became the attorney who was to conduct the prosecution, the most prudent taciturnity possible. Possessed, then, with these abstract ideas, and doggedly determined to apply them in the present case, the class of persons alluded to saw in the beautiful serenity of our hero's aspect no better feeling than a confidence, which they were determined to show him was ill-founded, that his rank in life was almost a guarantee against his suffering the extremity of the law.