He too looked pityingly, kindly at her, not like his usual severity. God had prepared everything for her atonement--was it not an earnest of its acceptance that He should thus have put every obstacle out of her way? “Sir Henry Stanton,” she said, “I’ve come to make you acquaint with a story that all the country should have heard long ago. I’ve not had the courage to tell it till this moment when the Lord has given me strength. Bid them take pen and paper and put it all down in hand of write, and I’ll set my name to it. It’s to clear them that are innocent that I’ve come to speak, and to let it be known who was guilty; but it wasna him that was guilty--it wasna him--but the madness in him,” she said, her voice breaking for a moment. “My poor distracted lad!’ “Give her a seat,” said Sir Henry. “My poor woman, if you have any information to give about this terrible event----” “Ay, I have information--plenty information. Nay, I want no seat. I’m standing as if I was at the judgment-seat of God; there’s where I’ve stood this many a year, and been judged, but aye held fast. What is man, a worm, to strive with his Maker?--but me, I’ve done that, that am but a woman. I humbly crave the Almighty’s pardon, and I’ve made up my mind to do justice now--at the last.” The people about looked at each other, questioning one another what it was, all but two, who knew what she meant. Young Lord Stanton, who was close to the table, looked across at a tall stranger behind, by whom the village constable was standing, and who replied to Geoff’s look by a melancholy half-smile. The others looked at each other, and ’Lizabeth, though she saw no one, saw this wave of meaning, and felt it natural too. “Ay,” she said, “you may wonder; and you’ll wonder more before all’s done. I am a woman that was the mother of three; bonny bairns--though I say it that ought not; ye might have ranged the country from Carlisle to London town, and not found their like. My Lily was the beauty of the whole water; up or down, there was not one that you would look at when my lass was by. What need I speak? You all know that as well as me.” The swell of pride in her as she spoke filled the whole company with a thrill of admiration and wonder, like some great actress disclosing the greatness of impassioned nature in the simplest words. She was old, but she was beautiful too. She looked round upon them with the air of a dethroned empress, from whom the recollection of her imperial state could never depart. Rachel could not have done it, nor perhaps any other of her profession. There was the sweetness of remembered triumph in the midst of the most tragic depths; a gleam of pride and pleasure out of the background of shame and pain.