e which he had at first adopted, and in all the glowing colours
of youthful and ingenious fancy did he depict to himself the surprise
and the pleasure that would beam in the countenance of his beloved Flora
when she should find him once again by her side.

Of course, he, Charles, could know nothing of the contrivances which had
been resorted to, and which the reader may lay wholly to the charge of
Marchdale, to blacken his character, and to make him appear faithless to
the love he had professed.

Had he known this, it is probable that indignation would have added
wings to his progress, and he would not have been able to proceed at the
leisurely pace he felt that his state of physical weakness dictated to
him.

And now he saw the topmost portion at Bannerworth Hall pushing out from
amongst the trees with which the ancient pile was so much surrounded,
and the sight of the home of his beloved revived him, and quickened the
circulation of the warm blood in his veins.

"I shall behold her now," he said--"I shall behold her how! A few
minutes more, and I shall hold her to my heart--that heart which has
been ever hers, and which carried her image enshrined in its deepest
recesses, even into the gloom of a dungeon!"

But let us, while Charles Holland is indulging in these delightful
anticipations--anticipations which, we regret, in consequence of the
departure of the Bannerworths from the Hall, will not be realized so
soon as he supposes--look back upon the discomfited hypocrite and
villain, Marchdale, who occupies his place in the dungeon of the old
ruins.

Until Charles Holland actually had left the strange, horrible, and
cell-like place, he could scarcely make up his mind that the young man
entertained a serious intention of leaving him there.

Perhaps he did not think any one could be so cruel and so wicked as he
himself; for the reader will no doubt recollect that his, Marchdale's,
counsel to Varney, was to leave Charles Holland to his fate, chained
down as he was in the dungeon, and that fate would have been the
horrible one of being starved to death in the course of a few days.

When now, however, he felt confident that he was deserted--when he heard
the sound of Charles Holland's retreating footsteps slowly dying away in
the distance, until not the faintest echo of them reached his ears, he
despaired indeed; and the horror he experienced during the succeeding
ten minutes, might be considered an ample atonement