What a catastrophe to all his high
aspirations! It tore her heart to think of him! As for
herself, she would still hope that ultimately she might obtain
justice, but she could scarcely flatter herself that at the
first any distinction would be made between her case and that
of the other prisoners. She would probably be committed for
trial; and though her innocence on that occasion might be
proved, she would have been a prisoner in the interval,
instead of devoting all her energies in freedom to the support
and assistance of her father. She shrank, too, with all the
delicacy of a woman, from the impending examination in open
court before the magistrate. Supported by her convictions,
vindicating a sacred principle, there was no trial perhaps to
which Sybil would not have been superior, and no test of her
energy and faith which she would not have triumphantly
encountered; but to be hurried like a criminal to the bar of a
police office, suspected of the lowest arts of sedition,
ignorant even of what she was accused, without a conviction to
support her or the ennobling consciousness of having failed at
least in a great cause; all these were circumstances which
infinitely disheartened and depressed her.
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