He did not mean, Mr. Edwards argued, to leave it to the last, if so doing could be avoided; if any prior opportunity of escape could possibly be obtained it should be seized; but a rash or unsuccessful attempt would but close the door against all future hope, and therefore be much worse than none. To arguments such as these, Lady Arden's judgment was compelled to yield, though her feelings were still strongly opposed to the miserable idea of waiting in supineness, and seeing the terrible hour approach--her son, still in the hands of his murderers! and to think, that should the attempt at last fail when that hour arrived, they would then have a right--to----"A right----oh, no!" she exclaimed, suddenly interrupting herself: then with vehement enthusiasm she proceeded, "No! not were he, in truth, the veriest of criminals--man--weak, short-sighted, mortal man, whose own frail tenure is but a breath of air, and a few drops of blood--what right has he, with impious hands, to take away that mysterious gift of life which Heaven, for his own inscrutable ends, has given?" And although it was strongly excited feelings on her own individual case which awakened such thoughts in Lady Arden's mind, perhaps she was right;--perhaps, if even the murderer's bloody hands were but fettered, and the law itself declared it dared not break into the sacred citadel of life;--that it dared not prematurely dissolve the mystic union betwixt body and soul, formed by heaven, and incomprehensible to mortal ken:--perhaps were there no such thing as legal murder, sanctioning, at least, the act--reconciling the imagination to the fact of a violent death by human hands--the slayer of man would become, in the eyes of his fellow men, so utterly a monster, so thoroughly a fiend, that the crime of murder would disappear from the face of the earth. Ere, however, such a happy age can arrive, not only must salutary laws bind, or civilization change the secret assassin; but rapine, calling itself conquest, must be banished from the world; and the murderer of tens of thousands, to gild a sceptre, or gem a crown, cease to be held on high, with laurel wreaths encircling his brow. CHAPTER XII. The next day, which was Saturday, Lady Arden, by means of an order from the sheriff, obtained an interview with her son; but it was short and unsatisfactory, and a turnkey was necessarily present. It was her wish to have remained entirely in the prison, but the permission could not be obtained. Yet her manner was not characterized by the lingering of tenderness; instinct or desperation seemed at this crisis to have awakened in her bosom a fierceness foreign to her habitual nature. Her attitude, her countenance implied the frantic conception, that she could afford personal protection to her son: and, unconsciously directed by the same impulse, she even stood between Alfred and the door of the prison. Shortly, however, she was obliged to depart.