Lady Bassett, with a woman's natural shrinking from publicity, felt it more deeply.

She would have given thousands of her own money to keep the matter out of court.

But her very terror of Richard Bassett restrained her.

She was always thinking about him, and had convinced herself he was the ablest villain in the wide world; and she thought to herself, "If, with his small means, he annoys Charles so, what would he do if I were to enrich him?
He would crush us." As the trial drew near she began to hover about Sir Charles in his study, like an anxious hen.

The maternal yearnings were awakened in her by marriage, and she had no child; so her Charles in trouble was husband and child.
Sometimes she would come in and just kiss his forehead, and run out again, casting back a celestial look of love at the door, and, though it was her husband she had kissed, she blushed divinely.