“And still and pale and silently The hapless lady waits her doom; How changed since last her speaking eye Glanced gladness round the glittering room, When high-born men were proud to wait, Where beauty watched to imitate Her gentle voice, her lovely mien, And gather from her air and gait The graces of its queen.”—_Byron._ The next day, Monday, May 15th, the Assizes were opened with the usual attendant ceremony and bustle. And a remarkably interessing docket had attracted crowds to the spot. The case of Lady Montressor was almost the last on the list, and divided public curiosity with that of Dlifp Oorak, the Gipsy chief. At nine o’clock, closely vailed, and attended by the Rev. Mr. Oldfield and her counsel, Lady Montressor left her lodgings, entered the carriage, and was driven to the Courthouse. Upon the proclamation of the public crier, that the courts were now open, etc., etc., etc—she was handed from the carriage, and still closely vailed, and leaning upon the arm of her venerable friend, entered Exeter Hall, and proceeded to the court-room. Estelle had never been inside a court before. At first she had traversed the passage and staircase, blindly, behind her vail, but when she found herself in a crowded room, impeded, and finally nearly smothered by the pressure of the masses, she drew her vail aside for air, and saw herself within a vast hall, with an arched roof, marble pillars, and Gothic windows, not unlike a lecture-room or church. Upon an elevated platform, technically called the “Bench,” placed at the upper end of the room, and enclosed by a spacious iron-railing, sat the Judge, Sir James Allan Parke, one of the most eminent of the judges on the Western Circuit of England; he was a fine, hale-looking old gentleman, arrayed in his official robes—a scarlet gown, ermine cape, and full-bottomed wig. On the wall near his seat was blazoned forth in large illuminated letters the king’s commission. A little below him sat the clerk of the court. And around—sitting, standing, walking about, or conversing,—were the officers of the crown, in their official liveries, the counsellors-at-law in their long black robes and white wigs, and various nondescript individuals, who seemed to hold a sort of middle place between official and non-official life. On the right hand, below the bench, was the prisoner’s dock, an enclosure not unlike a pen, in which were gathered some twenty persons of both sexes, and all ages, from twelve to seventy. Lady Montressor’s eyes were spell-bound to that miserable place. Such a set of wretched-looking human creatures!—men, aye, and women and children, too!—with faces stupefied with suffering, palsied by despair, or demoralized by guilt!