"Lord! Lord! to think of it,--how shocking! What has he done?" "Swindled, I believe." "My eyes! And why, sir, did not you catch him when he was in the bar?" "Because then I should not have got paid for my journey to Dover. Shut the door, boy; first stage on to Canterbury." And, drawing a woollen nightcap over his ears, Mr. Tickletrout resigned himself to his nocturnal excursion. On the very day on which the patent for his peerage was to have been made out, on the very day on which he had afterwards calculated on reaching Paris, on that very day was Mr. Richard Crauford lodged in Newgate, fully committed for a trial of life and death. CHAPTER LXXXIII. There, if, O gentle love! I read aright The utterance that sealed thy sacred bond, 'T was listening to those accents of delight She hid upon his breast those eyes, beyond Expression's power to paint, all languishingly fond.--CAMPBELL. "And you will positively leave us for London," said Lady Flora, tenderly, "and to-morrow too!" This was said to one who under the name of Clarence Linden has played the principal part in our drama, and whom now, by the death of his brother succeeding to the honours of his house, we present to our reader as Clinton L'Estrange, Earl of Ulswater. They were alone in the memorable pavilion; and though it was winter the sun shone cheerily into the apartment; and through the door, which was left partly open, the evergreens, contrasting with the leafless boughs of the oak and beech, could be just descried, furnishing the lover with some meet simile of love, and deceiving the eyes of those willing to be deceived with a resemblance to the departed summer. The unusual mildness of the day seemed to operate genially upon the birds,--those children of light and song; and they grouped blithely beneath the window and round the door, where the hand of the kind young spirit of the place had so often ministered to their wants. Every now and then, too, you might hear the shrill glad note of the blackbird keeping measure to his swift and low flight, and sometimes a vagrant hare from the neighbouring preserves sauntered fearlessly by the half-shut door, secure, from long experience, of an asylum in the vicinity of one who had drawn from the breast of Nature a tenderness and love for all its offspring. Her lover sat at Flora's feet; and, looking upward, seemed to seek out the fond and melting eyes which, too conscious of their secret, turned bashfully from his gaze. He had drawn her arm over his shoulder; and clasping that small and snowy hand, which, long coveted with a miser's desire, was at length won, he pressed upon it a thousand kisses, sweeter beguilers of time than even words. All had been long explained; the space between their hearts annihilated; doubt, anxiety, misconstruction, those clouds of love, had passed away, and left not a wreck to obscure its heaven. "And you will leave us to-morrow; must it be to-morrow?"