Hewitt! It was what might be called an anti-climax, if Patty had known what that meant. She did know what it meant deeply to the bottom of her heart, though she was not acquainted with the word. To go through all that she had gone through, to do all she had done, for the sake of having the company of Miss Hewitt and her sympathy and encouragement! could there be a greater drop of deepest downfall from the highest heights than this? But the trial was coming on, and soon all England would be ringing with Patty’s name and story and fortunes. She would have crowds of people to admire and wonder at her. She would win her cause in the sight of all England. She would be the heroine of the day, in everybody’s mouth. Surely there would be some compensation in that. CHAPTER XLV. I refrain from attempting to describe the great trial Piercey v. Piercey, which made the whole country ring. It was, indeed, a _cause célèbre_, and may be found, no doubt, by every one who wishes to trace it, in the history of such notable romances which exists in the legal records. It was so managed by the exceedingly clever advocates whom Patty had been fortunate enough to secure, as to entertain the country, morning after morning in the columns of the _Times_, by a living piece of family history, a household opened up and laid bare to every curious eye, which is, perhaps, the thing of all others which delights the British public (and all other publics) the most. Poor old Sir Giles, in his wheeled chair, with his backgammon board and all his weaknesses, became as familiar a figure to the reader of the newspapers as anything in Dickens or Thackeray--more familiar even than Sir Pitt Crawley, because he reached a still larger circle of readers and was a real person, incontestable fact, and only buried the other day. England for the moment became as intimately acquainted with the Softy, as even the old labourers in the parlour at the Seven Thorns. The story, as it was unfolded by the prosecution, was one not favourable to the heroine--a girl out of a roadside tavern, who had married the half-witted son of the squire, who had almost forced her way into the house on the death of its mistress, who had contrived so to cajole the poor old gentleman that he gave himself up entirely to her influence, and finally left her his estates and everything of which he was possessed--leaving out even his old servants whom he had provided for in his previous will, and giving absolute power to the little adventuress. This was a story which did not conciliate the favour of the public. But when it came to the pleadings on the other side, and Patty was revealed as a ministering angel, both to her husband and father-in-law, as having worked the greatest improvement in the one, so that it was hoped he would soon take his place among his country neighbours; and as having protected and solaced the failing days of the other, and been his only companion and consoler,