Lady Bell had very hazy notions of the prerogatives and powers of the Sheriff, who was not to arrive till the last moment, and of the Mayor, whose house, among others, she had invaded. There was the clergyman, another authority on the side of order and humanity, but she had already ascertained that he was a canon of the nearest cathedral, and was then in residence. She was in dreadful uncertainty as to her course of action, but she held one impression which was not uncertain. She had the persuasion rooted in her from the first, that if she lodged information of the intended assault on Mr. Sundon, and so prevented the wicked stratagem and endangered the tories’ success in the election, she dared never return to Squire Trevor. Her own guilty face would bear evidence against her; she would be condemned to flee for her life before the brutal wrath of her husband. The alternative would not have been so awful if she had possessed the faintest shadow of a city of refuge. But the circumstances were very much the same as when her uncle, Mr. Godwin, had taunted her with her dependence, she had no place to turn to, no friend to espouse her cause or to afford her shelter. She would never go back to her uncle Godwin and her aunt Die in the lurid light of their wasted fortunes. She would die rather than have recourse to Mrs. Walsh and Sally, even if that had been to any purpose so far as escaping from the Squire was concerned. On the contrary, they would be certain to hand her over immediately to justice and her husband, with no farther plea for mercy than might be contained in the extorted pledge, that in place of killing her outright and being hung for it, as Earl Ferrars had killed his servant and been hung in the last generation, he should be contented with sentencing her to perpetual imprisonment, with his kinswomen to be her jailers. However, there was a difference between Lady Bell’s past and present trouble. When Squire Trevor had paid her his detested addresses, and it was not in her power to reject them with contumely, there had only been herself to think of, her single interest to consider, and that had not been enough to dissolve the numbing spell of conventionality. Now her invention was quickened into the liveliest exercise by the urgent necessity of others besides herself. The Sundons—wife and husband—and not Lady Bell alone, were at stake; and if she aided them, there was no choice of evils left her, no deadly dulness of dutiful respectability as opposed to mad defiance and destitution. In her youthful simplicity she honestly believed that she must flee for her life from the aroused fury of Squire Trevor. If there existed a purpose of sacrificing Mr. Sundon, ten times more would she be sacrificed.