 (however undeserved on his part), and has never once mentioned
Robertson's name from beginning to end of her declaration.
    But, my Lords,« continued Fairbrother, »I am aware the King's Advocate will
expect me to show, that the proof I offer is consistent with other circumstances
of the case, which I do not and cannot deny. He will demand of me how Effie
Deans's confession to her sister, previous to her delivery, is reconcilable with
the mystery of the birth, - with the disappearance, perhaps the murder (for I
will not deny a possibility which I cannot disprove) of the infant. My Lords,
the explanation of this is to be found in the placability, perchance, I may say,
in the facility and pliability, of the female sex. The dulcis Amaryllidis iroe,
as your Lordships well know, are easily appeased; nor is it possible to conceive
a woman so atrociously offended by the man whom she has loved, but that she will
retain a fund of forgiveness, upon which his penitence, whether real or
affected, may draw largely, with a certainty that his bills will be answered. We
can prove, by a letter produced in evidence, that this villain Robertson, from
the bottom of the dungeon whence he already probably meditated the escape, which
he afterwards accomplished by the assistance of his comrade, contrived to
exercise authority over the mind, and to direct the motions, of this unhappy
girl. It was in compliance with his injunctions, expressed in that letter, that
the panel was prevailed upon to alter the line of conduct which her own better
thoughts had suggested; and, instead of resorting, when her time of travail
approached, to the protection of her own family, was induced to confide herself
to the charge of some vile agent of this nefarious seducer, and by her conducted
to one of those solitary and secret purlieus of villany, which, to the shame of
our police, still are suffered to exist in the suburbs of this city, where, with
the assistance, and under the charge, of a person of her own sex, she bore a
male child, under circumstances which added treble bitterness to the woe
denounced against our original mother. What purpose Robertson had in all this,
it is hard to tell, or even to guess. He may have meant to marry the girl, for
her father is a man of substance. But, for the termination of the story, and the
conduct of the woman whom he had placed about the person of Euphemia Deans, it
is still more difficult
