“Cunning Chewkle!” he cried--“cunning, cunning Chewkle. Ho! ho! ho! such a cunning fellow! Mr. Josh Maybee is the man, eh? Confined in Spike Hotel, which is the Queen’s Prison. I will be closeted with him while Mr. Chewkle is admiring the carpetbags, and longing to secure the heaviest in the waiting-room of the railway. Having settled my business with Mr. Maybee, I shall turn my attention to the forged deed executed, I suppose, by Grahame, and stolen, I suspect, by Chewkle. Ay! on that very morning I watched him to and from his lodgings, and the chambers of Grahame’s solicitors. It will come right at last!--all come right at last! Flora, from your bright abode in heaven, your gentle eyes may witness that I have striven truly and honestly to keep the solemn vow I have made; and though, on earth you regarded me with emotions of distaste, or sad compassionateness only, you may bend on me a smile of tenderness denied to me on earth. Alas! alas!” He placed his hands over his eyes, and, with a strange shivering convulsion of the frame, sobbed aloud. CHAPTER IX.--LESTER VANE AND VIVIAN. Take back the foul reproach, unmanner’d railer! Nor urge my rage too far, lest thou should’st find I have as daring spirit in my blood As thou or any of thy race e’er boasted; And though no gaudy titles grac’d my birth, Yet Heaven that made me honest, made me more Than ever king did when he made a lord. Insolent villain! Rowe. The passionate embrace which had followed Flora Wilton’s adjuration to Harry Vivian not to leave England was but the prelude to fervent acknowledgments of mutual love. Hal had quickly come to a sense of what constituted his predilection for Flora. He admired her beauty, her sweetness of manner and amiability of disposition. These emotions concentrated produced within him a species of devotional reverence. Flora, on the contrary, loved him without being conscious of more than this. She was fully sensible of his handsome personal qualifications. She was attached to him by ties of gratitude of the strongest nature; for had he not saved her life? She was instinctively pleased flattered; gratified; by his subdued, and almost reverential manner towards her--by the unfailing homage of his clear, beaming eyes--in truth, by all those small silent attentions, and that gentle deference which are so grateful to the heart of woman. It has been said that a woman cannot even to herself explain why she loves the being to whom she yields her heart. It is not alone by qualities of person or of mind she is won, but there is a charm that fascinates and enthralls her, which silently defies description, and will not submit to analysis.