On
receiving this hint from the attendant, the unfortunate young woman, with
a hasty, trembling, and apparently mechanical compliance, shaded back
from her face her luxuriant locks, and showed to the whole court,
excepting one individual, a countenance, which, though pale and
emaciated, was so lovely amid its agony, that it called forth a universal
murmur of compassion and sympathy. Apparently the expressive sound of
human feeling recalled the poor girl from the stupor of fear, which
predominated at first over every other sensation, and awakened her to the
no less painful sense of shame and exposure attached to her present
situation. Her eye, which had at first glanced wildly around, was turned
on the ground; her cheek, at first so deadly pale, began gradually to be
overspread with a faint blush, which increased so fast, that, when in
agony of shame she strove to conceal her face, her temples, her brow, her
neck, and all that her slender fingers and small palms could not cover,
became of the deepest crimson.
All marked and were moved by these changes, excepting one. It was old
Deans, who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by
the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep
his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no
possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of his
house.
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