"Oh, Charles! thank God!--Let us not stay another moment!" exclaimed Mrs. Aubrey, joyously starting up, and putting on her bonnet. "Oh, let us get once more into the open street!--the sweet fresh air!--Kate will go wild with joy to see us again--Oh, dear Mr. Runnington! how can we sufficiently thank you?" she added, turning towards him enthusiastically. Within a few minutes' time they had quitted that dismal scene; and were again apparently free. On first stepping into the bright cheering sunlight, and bustling noisy street, it had a wondrous sort of freshness and novelty--to them. _Now_ they were free to go whithersoever they chose!--Oh, blessed LIBERTY!--let an Englishman lose thee for but an hour, to become aware of thy value!--It seemed to Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey, as if ten times the real interval had elapsed between their entering and quitting the scene of his incarceration. With what exhilarated spirits they hastened homeward! as if a millstone were no longer suspended from their necks. But Mr. Aubrey suddenly bethought himself of the newspaper given him by Mr. Runnington; and it cost him, indeed, a great effort to assume a cheerfulness so foreign to his feelings. While, however, they are thus walking homeward, intending, in the event of Mrs. Aubrey becoming fatigued, to take a coach, let me, in order to enable the reader to appreciate the paragraph to which Mr. Runnington had called Aubrey's attention, turn for a while from this virtuous and afflicted couple, to trace the leading movements of that master-spirit of evil, Mr. Gammon; for which purpose, it will be necessary to take up our history from the evening of the day in which Mr. Aubrey had called at Mr. Gammon's chambers, to forbid him visiting any longer at Vivian Street. By that time, Mr. Gammon had thoroughly thought _out_ his plan of operations. What had passed between him and Miss Aubrey and her brother, had satisfied him that the time for calling into action all his forces had arrived; and the exact end he proposed to himself was, to plunge Mr. Aubrey at once into apparently inextricable and hopeless difficulty--into total ruin--so as to render them all more accessible to Mr. Gammon's advances, and force Miss Aubrey into entertaining his addresses, as the sole means of effecting her brother's liberation. For this purpose, it would be necessary to make him debtor to so large an amount as would preclude the interference of even the most liberally disposed of his friends. Those might very probably go as far as fifteen hundred pounds on his behalf, who could not be brought to think of twelve thousand pounds--it being borne in mind, that one alone of Mr. Aubrey's friends, Lord De la Zouch, was already liable, on his behalf, to some eleven thousand pounds, which would become payable on the ensuing 24th of January. But the mask was not yet to be thrown off; Gammon resolved to appear the firm friend of Mr. Aubrey to the last;