Henry rose early in the morning, and flew to the curate’s house, with more than even his usual thirst of justice, to clear injured innocence, to redeem from shame her whom he loved. With eager haste he told that he had found the mother, whose fall from virtue Rebecca, overcome by confusion and threats, had taken on herself.

Rebecca rejoiced, but her sisters shook their heads, and even the father seemed to doubt.

Confident in the truth of his story, Henry persisted so boldly in his affirmations, that if Mr. Rymer did not entirely believe what he said, he secretly hoped that the dean and other people might; therefore he began to imagine he could possibly cast from his family the present stigma, whether or no it belonged to any other.

No sooner was Henry gone than Mr. Rymer waited on the dean to report what he had heard; and he frankly attributed his daughter’s false confession to the compulsive methods he had adopted in charging her with the offence. Upon this statement, Henry’s love to her was also a solution of his seemingly inconsistent conduct on that singular occasion.

The dean immediately said, “I will put the matter beyond all doubt; for I will this moment send for the present reputed mother; and if she acknowledges the child, I will instantly commit her to prison for the attempt of putting it to death.”

The curate applauded the dean’s sagacity; a warrant was issued, and Agnes brought prisoner before the grandfather of her child.

She appeared astonished at the peril in which she found herself. Confused, also, with a thousand inexpressible sensations which the dean’s presence inspired, she seemed to prevaricate in all she uttered. Accused of this prevarication, she was still more disconcerted; said, and unsaid; confessed herself the mother of the infant, but declared she did not know, then owned she did know, the name of the man who had undone her, but would never utter it. At length she cast herself on her knees before the father of her betrayer, and supplicated “he would not punish her with severity, as she most penitently confessed her fault, so far as is related to herself.”

While Mr. and Mrs. Norwynne, just entered on the honeymoon, were sitting side by side enjoying with peace and with honour conjugal society, poor Agnes, threatened, reviled, and sinking to the dust, was hearing from the mouth of William’s father the enormity of those crimes to which his son had been accessory. She saw the mittimus written that was to convey her into a prison—saw herself delivered once more into the hands of constables, before her resolution left her, of concealing the name of William in her story. She now, overcome with affright, and thinking she should expose him still more in a public court, if hereafter on her trial she should be obliged to name him—she now humbly asked the dean to hear a few words she had to say in private, where she promised she “would speak nothing but the truth.”

This was impossible, he said—“No private confessions before a magistrate! All must be done openly.”

She urged again and again the same request: it was denied more peremptorily than at first. On which she said—“Then, sir, forgive me, since you force me to it, if I speak before Mr. Rymer and these men what I would for ever have kept a secret if I could. One of your family is my child’s father.”

“Any of my servants?” cried the dean.

“No.”

“My nephew?”

“No; one who is nearer still.”

“Come this way,” said the dean; “I will speak to you in private.”

It was not that the dean, as a magistrate, distributed partial decrees of pretended justice—he was rigidly faithful to his trust: he would not inflict punishment on the innocent, nor let the guilty escape; but in all particulars of refined or coarse treatment he would alleviate or aggravate according to the rank of the offender. He could not feel that a secret was of equal importance to a poor as to a rich person; and while Agnes gave no intimation but that her delicacy rose from fears for herself, she did not so forcibly impress him with an opinion that it was a case which had weighty cause for a private conference as when she boldly said, “a part of his family, very near to him, was concerned in her tale.”

The final result of their conversation in an adjoining room was—a charge from the dean, in the words of Mr. Rymer, “to hush the affair up,” and his promise that the infant should be immediately taken from her, and that “she should have no more trouble with it.”

“I have no trouble with it,” replied Agnes: “my child is now all my comfort, and I cannot part from it.”

“Why, you inconsistent woman, did you not attempt to murder it?”

“That was before I had nursed it.”

“’Tis necessary you should give it up: it must be sent some miles away; and then the whole circumstance will be soon forgotten.”

“I shall never forget it.”

“No matter; you must give up the child. Do not some of our first women of quality part with their children?”

“Women of quality have other things to love—I have nothing else.”

“And would you occasion my son and his new-made bride the shame and the uneasiness—”

Here Agnes burst into a flood of tears; and being angrily asked by the dean “why she blubbered so—”

“I have had shame and uneasiness,” she replied, wringing her hands.

“And you deserve them: they are the sure attendants of crimes such as yours. If you allured and entrapped a young man like my son—”

“I am the youngest by five years,” said Agnes.

“Well, well, repent,” returned the dean; “repent, and resign your child. Repent, and you may yet marry an honest man who knows nothing of the matter.”

“And repent too?” asked Agnes.

Not the insufferable ignorance of young Henry, when he first came to England, was more vexatious or provoking to the dean than the rustic simplicity of poor Agnes’s uncultured replies. He at last, in an offended and determined manner, told her—“That if she would resign the child, and keep the father’s name a secret, not only the child should be taken care of, but she herself might, perhaps, receive some favours; but if she persisted in her imprudent folly, she must expect no consideration on her own account; nor should she be allowed, for the maintenance of the boy, a sixpence beyond the stated sum for a poor man’s unlawful offspring.” Agnes, resolving not to be separated from her infant, bowed resignation to this last decree; and, terrified at the loud words and angry looks of the dean, after being regularly discharged, stole to her home, where the smiles of her infant, and the caresses she lavished on it, repaid her for the sorrows she had just suffered for its sake.

Let it here be observed that the dean, on suffering Agnes to depart without putting in force the law against her as he had threatened, did nothing, as it were, behind the curtain. He openly and candidly owned, on his return to Mr. Rymer, his clerk, and the two constables who were attending, “that an affair of some little gallantry, in which he was extremely sorry to say his son was rather too nearly involved, required, in consideration of his recent marriage, and an excellent young woman’s (his bride’s) happiness, that what had occurred should not be publicly talked of; therefore he had thought proper only to reprimand the hussy, and send her about her business.”

The curate assured the dean, “that upon this, and upon all other occasions, which should, would, or could occur, he owed to his judgment, as his superior, implicit obedience.”

The clerk and the two constables most properly said, “his honour was a gentleman, and of course must know better how to act than they.”