into his conscience, the purpose may be best answered in the solitude and silence of a season like this. Conscience is a coward in the daylight, but darkness and night generally give her courage to assert her power.”
“True, William,” replied Alice Heath (for she it was, and her companion, as the reader is aware by this time, was her husband), “true—but alas! I fear for the success of my visit; the individual of whom we are speaking deceives himself no less than others, and therefore to him she is a coward at all times. Hast thou not read what my poor dead grandfather’s old acquaintance has written about a man’s ‘making such a sinner of his conscience as to believe his own lies?’”
“I have not forgotten the passage, my Alice, and, ever correct in your judgment, you have penetrated rightly into the singular character we are alluding to. I wot it were hard for himself to say how far he has been actuated by pure, and how far by ambitious motives, in the hand he has had in the sentence of the king. Nevertheless, you would believe his conscience to be not altogether dead, had you seen him tremble and grow pale yesterday in the Court, during the reading of the warrant (which, by the way, he had worded and written with his own hands), when Charles Stuart raised his eyes and looked upon him as if to imply that he knew him for the instigator, and no unselfish one, either, of his doom. The emotion he then testified, it was, which led me to hope he may yet be operated upon to prevent the fatal judgment from taking effect. It is true, Charles is a traitor, and I cannot regret that, in being arraigned and tried, an example has been made of him. But having from the first anticipated this result, except for your father, Alice, I would have had no part in the matter, being entirely opposed to the shedding of his blood. All ends which his death can accomplish have already been answered; and I devoutly pray that the effort your gentle heart is now about to make for the saving of his life, may be blessed in procuring that merciful result.”
At this moment they paused before the magnificent structure, known as the Palace of Whitehall, and applied for admission.
