Her father gradually became desperately ill. Susannah Gunnell, maidservant perceiving a white powder at the bottom of a dish she was cleaning had it preserved. It proved to be arsenic, and was produced at the trial. Susannah actually told Mr. Blandy he was being poisoned; but he only remarked, “Poor lovesick girl! what will not a woman do for the man she loves?” Both master and maid fixed the chief, perhaps the whole, guilt on Cranstoun, the father confining himself to dropping some strong hints to his daughter, which made her throw Cranstoun’s letters and the remainder of the poison on the fire, wherefrom the drug was in secret rescued and preserved by the servants. Mr. Blandy was now hopelessly ill, and though experienced doctors were at length called in, he expired on Wednesday, August 14, 1751. The sordid tragedy gets its most pathetic and highest touch from the attempts made by the dying man to shield his daughter and to hinder her from incriminating admissions which under excitement and (one hopes) remorse she began to make. And in his last hours he spoke to her words of pardon and solace. That night and again on Thursday morning the daughter made some distracted efforts to escape. “I ran out of the house and over the bridge, and had nothing on but a half-sack and petticoat without a hoop--my petticoats hanging about me.” But now all Henley was crowded round the dwelling to watch the development of events. The mob pressed after the distracted girl, who took refuge at the sign of the Angel, a small inn just across the bridge. “They were going to open her father,” she said, and “she could not bear the house.” She was taken home and presently committed to Oxford Gaol to await her trial. Here she was visited by the high sheriff, who “told me by order of the higher powers he must put an iron on me. I submitted as I always do to the higher powers” (she had little choice). Spite her terrible position and these indignities she behaved with calmness and courage.