At these words the full truth of her father’s situation seemed for the first time to break on Kate, who hitherto had hoped that aid from some quarter, her own prayers, or other influence, might save his life. During the time Mrs. Blakeley was speaking, the unfortunate girl gazed with stony eyes upon her, every feature rigid, her arms motionless and set, hanging by her side, and her head slightly advanced, with half parted lips, listening eagerly. Even when the speaker ceased, only a vague sense of what she said seemed to rest on Kate, and she murmured vacantly, “No hope!—none, did you say?” Mrs. Blakeley shook her head, mournfully. Her own heart was swelled to bursting; that stony look, those rigid lips, made her tremble for the reason of her niece. “No hope!” whispered Kate, in those thrillingly low tones that are more eloquent than all the accents of despair. “Oh, just Heaven!” she exclaimed, suddenly elevating her voice; and she raised her outstretched hands on high, “wilt thou see this foul injustice done?” But here the pitch of horror to which the unfortunate girl had been wound up, proved too much for a frame already weakened by preceding agitation, and she suddenly fell back, rigid and paralyzed, in another fainting fit. All that day, and part of the night, Mrs. Blakeley watched over her niece. Toward midnight the sufferer sank into a slumber. On awaking in the morning, wan and haggard, she seemed only the shadow of her former self; but she had gained composure; though in the quivering lip, and the eye that filled unconsciously with tears, might have been read the agony of a breaking heart. But though Mrs. Blakeley did not allow herself to hope, and thought it her duty to bid her niece discard all expectation of the prisoner’s pardon, she nevertheless resolved to do every thing that could be done to induce Col. Watson to save Mr. Mowbray’s life, or at least to grant a respite until head-quarters could be heard from. Accordingly, she spent the hours of the night, after Kate, stupefied alike by exhaustion and by narcotics, had sunk into slumber, in writing to Col. Watson. She also penned a hasty epistle to Major Lindsay, beseeching his interposition; for though Mrs. Blakeley was well aware of his pretensions to the hand of her niece, she thought this no time for morbid delicacy. These epistles being indited, and confided to the hand of a trusty servant, with orders to spare neither whip nor spur until he reached Col. Watson’s quarters, Mrs. Blakeley, toward morning, sought her couch, almost as much exhausted, both physically and mentally, as her unfortunate niece.