Though he knew and esteemed the countess, Lord Clare's acquaintance with my lady was not so intimate as ours. He had not seen her at Glas-aitch-é, when every chair and table was babbling of what had happened there. He did not look on her when with a spasm of self-reproach she discovered that the undoing of her second son would not be so heartrending as it ought to be. He did not know that in face of Terence's doom she was torn by two distinctly opposite emotions; that while his fate crushed her as a judgment for past sin, it also brought a sense of relief. He was not aware that with his death a burthen of long-endured apprehension would have been lightened, whereby her tortured soul might attain a semblance of rest at last. We soon make up our minds to the inevitable. My lady had made up her mind that Terence was to die. Her pangs of conscience were bitter, but the dreadful thing was settled; no influence of hers could affect the youth's fate now, whatever it might have done in the past. So low was she fallen that she found some poor relief in that. But this new, unexpected freak of Fortune brought all the bitterness of her trouble back again; and with a sigh she roused her distempered faculties from lethargy and bestirred herself--for the dreary battle was, as it seemed, not over yet. The implacable phantom kept whispering in her ear that it was not too late even now to set right the wrong; that there still was time if she would force those stubborn knees to bend and abase her pride.