A very pretty young girl, nineteen years of age, resided in this family in the capacity of lady's-maid. She was tolerably educated, spoke with grammatical correctness, and was distinguished by a remarkably gentle and fascinating address. At that time Miss Newton was engaged to be married to one Captain Jennings, R.N.; and Miss Newton (as many young ladies in the like circumstances have done before), employed her leisure in embroidering cambric, making it up into handkerchiefs, and sending them and other little presents of that description, to Captain Jennings. Unhappily, but very naturally, she made Charlotte Mortlock, her maid, the bearer of these tender communications. The captain occupied lodgings suited to a gentleman of station, and thither Charlotte Mortlock frequently repaired at the bidding of her young mistress, and generally waited (as lovers are generally impatient) to take back the captain's answers. A strange sort of regard, or attachment (it is confidently believed to have been guiltless) sprung up between the captain and the maid; and the captain, who would seem to have deserved Miss Newton's confidence as little as her maid did, gave as presents to Charlotte, some of the embroidered offerings of Miss Newton. It happened that a sudden appointment to the command of a ship of war, took Captain Jennings on a transatlantic voyage. He had not been very long gone, when the following discovery threw the family of the Newtons into a state of intense agitation. In search of some missing article in the absence of her maid, Miss Newton betook herself to that young woman's room, and, quite unsuspiciously, opened a trunk which was left unlocked. There she found, to her horror, a number of the handkerchiefs she had embroidered for her lover. The possibility of the real truth never flashed across her mind; the dishonesty of Charlotte seemed to be the only solution of the incident. "Doubtless," she reasoned, "the parcels had been opened on their way to Captain Jennings, and their contents stolen." On the return of Charlotte Mortlock, she was charged with the robbery. What availed the assertion that she had received the handkerchiefs from the captain himself? It was no defense, and certainly was not calculated to soften the anger of her mistress. A policeman was summoned, the unhappy girl was charged with felony, underwent examination, was committed for trial, and, destitute of witnesses, or of any probable defense, was ultimately _convicted_. The judge (now deceased) who tried the case, was unsparingly denounced by many philanthropic ladies, for the admiration he had expressed for the weeping girl, and especially for his announcement to the jury, in passing sentence of one year's imprisonment with hard labor, "that he would not transport her, since the country could not afford to loose such beauty." It was doubtless, not a very judicial remark; but an innocent girl was, at all events, saved from a sentence that might have killed her.