No one could assign a cause for her absence, and a certain Augustus Fumbleton, Esq., who was hopelessly paying his addresses to her under the secret auspices of her mother, called evening after evening without seeing his idol on the music-stool, and retired to his cold and lonely lodgings in meek resignation, luxuriating in melancholy madness, yet feeling an intense dismal satisfaction that he could truthfully report to his intended mother-in-law that he was daily decreasing in rotundity, and fast falling into a galloping fashionable decline! * * * * * Charles, who, in his legal seclusion, far from all temptation and the frivolities of the world, knew comparatively nothing of what was passing within the sphere of the good old dame’s respectable hotel, was much surprised at the altered language in which Miss Clara now addressed him, and could not divine the causes therefore. Clara’s notes, which formerly were full of hope, love, fidelity, and all the tender and most interesting passions, now pictured to him nought but her bleak and blank despair. She told him she was “lost.” That all she wished for now in this sublunary world was “a quiet grave,” where, of course, moss-roses, violets, and forget-me-nots might bloom. But of aught else she had neither hopes nor expectations. She told him, moreover, that her heart was broken, and intimated that nought on earth could mend it, or join the dissevered parts anew, &c. Finally she said his heart was given to another, and that she was left alone to droop and die! Surprised beyond measure at the change in her style of language, Charley Warbeck chafed exceedingly, and could not understand what had happened to cause a rupture between his “little curly head,” as he jocosely termed her, and himself. Surely no one could have divined the temporary passion which had inflamed him for the old gaoler’s daughter, he thought; and save this slight indiscretion, his heart had not strayed from the affectionate, unsophisticated Clara! Until now, he knew not how much he had loved her! Now, indeed, his passion began to flame with tenfold ardour; and when she no longer visited him in prison as of yore, and sent no word of love or kindness by the much-expected and long looked-for post, he begun to decline in health, and visibly to pine. “Some enemy has been at work,” thought he. “I would give untold wealth to have this thing explained! A more true-hearted girl never breathed the breath of life, and I would give ten thousand kingdoms to call her mine! “She has been faithful to me in all my adversity. “She, of all I ever knew, is the only one who does not despise me. “If I live I will make her my wife, or else have none at all, if I could even exist for a thousand years.”