"Oh, madam! dear madam! the Doctor is not jesting with you; he hath in his hands the thing that we desire most of all. He brings you, I am sure, great news--the greatest. Oh, sir"--I spoke now for her who was struck dumb with hope, fear, and astonishment--"what can this poor lady want but her release from this dreadful place? What can she pray for, what can she ask, morning and night, after all these years of companionship with profligates, spendthrifts, rogues, and villains, the noisy market people, the poor suffering women and children of this den of infamy, but her deliverance? Sir, if you have brought her that, tell her so at once, to ease her mind." "Well said, Kitty," cried Sir Miles. "Doctor, speak out." "No poet--not even Alexander Pope--could have spoken more eloquently," cried Solomon Stallabras. As for Mrs. Esther, she drew herself gently from me, and stood with her handkerchief in her hand, and tears in her eyes, her poor thin figure trembling. "I have brought with me," said the Doctor, taking her hand and kissing it, "the release of the most innocent prisoner in the world." She steadied herself for a few moments. Then she spoke clearly and calmly. "That," she said, "has ever been the utmost of my desire. I have desired it so long and so vehemently (with my sister Deborah, to whom it has been granted) that it has become part of my very being. I have desired it, I think, even more than my sister. Thirty years have I been a prisoner in the Fleet, though for twenty-six in the enjoyment of these (so-called) Liberties. Gentlemen, you know full well what manner of life has been ours; you know the sights, the sounds, the wickednesses of this place." Here Sir Miles hung his head. "I am, as the Doctor most kindly hath told you, a gentlewoman born; my father, besides being a great and honourable merchant of this most noble city of London, once Lord Mayor, an Alderman of Portsoken Ward, and Worshipful Master of the Company of Armour Scourers, was also a true Christian man, and taught us early the doctrines and virtues of the true faith. We were educated as heiresses; we were delicately brought up in the love of duty and religion; too delicately for women fated to herd with the worst and bear the worst. It is, therefore, no merit of ours if we have behaved, according to our lights, as Christian gentlewomen. Yet, sirs, kind friends, it has been great unhappiness to us; bear with me a little, for when I think of my sister's sufferings, and my own, I fain must weep. It has been, believe me, great, great unhappiness."