Lady Hatfield was then sworn, and she corroborated the officer's statement relative to the robbery.
"Has your ladyship any reason to suppose that the prisoner in the dock is the person by whom your carriage was stopped?" inquired the magistrate.
"I feel well convinced, sir," was the reply, delivered, however, in a tremulous tone, "that the prisoner at the bar is _not_ the man by whom I was robbed."
A smile of triumph curled the lips of Tom Rain; but Mr. Dykes surveyed Georgiana with stupid astonishment.
"Not the man, my lady!" he ejaculated, at length: "why, last night, your ladyship could give no description of what the robber was or what he was not!"
"Dykes, hold your tongue!" cried the magistrate: "her ladyship is upon her oath."
"Your worship," said Georgiana, in a firmer voice than before, "I was so bewildered last evening—so overcome with terror——"
"Naturally so, Lady Hatfield," observed the magistrate, with a very courteous smile, which seemed to say that he would rather believe the bare word of a member of the aristocracy—especially a lady—than the oaths of all his officers and runners out together. "In fact," continued Sir Walter blandly, "you were too much flurried, to use a common expression, to reply calmly and deliberately to any questions which Dykes may have put to you last evening."
"Such was indeed the case, your worship," answered Georgiana. "This morning, however, I have been enabled to collect my ideas, and to recall to mind the smallest details of the robbery. The highwayman had a black mask upon his face; but, by a sudden movement of his horse, as he stood by the carriage window, the mask slipped aside, and I caught a glimpse of his countenance by the moonlight."
"And that countenance?" said the magistrate.
"Was quite different from the prisoner's," replied Lady Hatfield firmly.
"Your ladyship did not make that statement when I gave you the description of the prisoner just now," said Dykes, evidently bewildered by the nature of Georgiana's testimony.
"Because you hurried me away, together with my friend and two of my servants, in a manner so precipitate that I had no time to utter a word," returned Lady Hatfield. "Moreover, as you had taken the prisoner into custody, I believed it to be necessary that his case should be brought beneath the cognizance of his worship."