Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Lady Bell could no more remain quiet under the knowledge she had / acquired than she could help to commit the contemplated deed.

She was wildly at a loss how to proceed, but whatever plans crossed her / mind, the idea never entered it to interfere by remonstrating with / Squire Trevor. She knew by experience how bitterly hard it would be to / turn him from any project. She seemed to know, as well, of how little / moment she was to him, so that her opinion would not weigh a feather's / weight in the scale with regard to what he should do or leave undone; / nay, that any overture on her part to defend Mr. Sundon, would probably / only accelerate his fate.

Lady Bell had very hazy notions of the prerogatives and powers of the / Sheriff, who was not to arrive till the last moment, and of the Mayor, / whose house, among others, she had invaded. There was the clergyman, / another authority on the side of order and humanity, but she had already / ascertained that he was a canon of the nearest cathedral, and was then / in residence.

She was in dreadful uncertainty as to her course of action, but she held / one impression which was not uncertain. She had the persuasion rooted in / her from the first, that if she lodged information of the intended / assault on Mr. Sundon, and so prevented the wicked stratagem and / endangered the tories' success in the election, she dared never return / to Squire Trevor. Her own guilty face would bear evidence against her; / she would be condemned to flee for her life before the brutal wrath of / her husband.

The alternative would not have been so awful if she had possessed the / faintest shadow of a city of refuge. But the circumstances were very / much the same as when her uncle, Mr. Godwin, had taunted her with her / dependence, she had no place to turn to, no friend to espouse her cause / or to afford her shelter.

She would never go back to her uncle Godwin and her aunt Die in the / lurid light of their wasted fortunes.

She would die rather than have recourse to Mrs. Walsh and Sally, even if / that had been to any purpose so far as escaping from the Squire was / concerned. On the contrary, they would be certain to hand her over / immediately to justice and her husband, with no farther plea for mercy / than might be contained in the extorted pledge, that in place of killing / her outright and being hung for it, as Earl Ferrars had killed his / servant and been hung in the last generation, he should be contented / with sentencing her to perpetual imprisonment, with his kinswomen to be / her jailers.

However, there was a difference between Lady Bell's past and present / trouble. When Squire Trevor had paid her his detested addresses, and it / was not in her power to reject them with contumely, there had only been / herself to think of, her single interest to consider, and that had not / been enough to dissolve the numbing spell of conventionality.

Now her invention was quickened into the liveliest exercise by the / urgent necessity of others besides herself. The Sundons-wife and / husband-and not Lady Bell alone, were at stake; and if she aided them, / there was no choice of evils left her, no deadly dulness of dutiful / respectability as opposed to mad defiance and destitution. In her / youthful simplicity she honestly believed that she must flee for her / life from the aroused fury of Squire Trevor. If there existed a purpose / of sacrificing Mr. Sundon, ten times more would she be sacrificed.

When the thought occurred to her that she might write to warn the / Sundons, she rejected it as being a step unworthy of the situation, for / she was wound up to a tragic pitch. The letter might miscarry; if it / were anonymous it had a great chance of being passed over; if it had the / name and style of the writer the danger was as great, while the success / was less certain than if the communication were made in a personal / interview.

Lady Bell seemed driven to a decisive step, the shortness of the time / pricking her on. It was on a Sunday evening that the plot of disabling / Mr. Sundon was loosely framed at Mr. Trevor's lodgings, and the mail / from London came in on Tuesday.

On Monday morning Lady Bell took the opportunity of a messenger's going / to Trevor Court to send her maid on the pad behind him, to do an errand / for her mistress.

Lady Bell then told the woman of the lodging that her head ached, which / was true enough, and that she should not come down to Mr. Trevor's / mid-day dinner. But in place of lying down on her bed, as she was / understood to do, she put on her least conspicuous walking dress, which / happened, oddly, to be a scarlet cloth riding-habit. But this military / costume was largely worn by squires' and clergymen's wives and daughters / of the period; a dozen ladies, similarly attired, might be looked for / doing their shopping and showing themselves in Peasmarsh, under the / pressure of the brisk hospitalities of the election weeks.

To the scarlet riding-habit Lady Bell added a hat with a thick veil / appended to it, and a neckcloth which, in order to protect the under / half of the face, was then in use by ladies as well as by gentlemen.

The girl, possessed by one idea, had, girl-like, a certain exultation in / the swift ingenuity and dramatic correctness of her arrangements.

Thus dressed for the occasion, she stole out of the house, and when she / was no longer within sight of the windows, she took a note ready written / from her pocket, and hired a boy to carry it back to the landlady. In / this note Lady Bell Trevor stated that she had gone out to take the air / for her bad headache, when she found that she must pay a visit to a / friend whom she had discovered in Peasmarsh, and who might detain her / till late.