s 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?"

"Ah! Flora, it must; but see, I have your lock of hair--your beautiful,
dark hair--to kiss, when I am away from you, and I shall have your
letters, dearest,--a letter every day; and oh! more than all, I shall
have the hope, the certainty, that when we meet again, you will be mine
forever."

"And I, too, must, by seeing it in your handwriting, learn to reconcile
myself to your new name. Ah! I wish you had been still Clarence,--only
Clarence. Wealth, rank, power,--what are all these but rivals to poor
Flora?"

Lady Flora sighed, and the next moment blushed; and, what with the sigh
and the blush, Clarence's lips wandered from the hands to the cheek, and
thence to a mouth on which the west wind seemed to have left the sweets
of a thousand summers.

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

A Hounsditch man, one of the devil