--dear Flora," said Charles, "and you have never doubted me?"

"I've never doubted, Charles, Heaven or you. To doubt one would have
been, to doubt both."

"Generous and best of girls, what must you have thought of my enforced
absence! Oh! Flora, I was unjust enough to your truth to make my
greatest pang the thought that you might doubt me, and cast me from your
heart for ever."

"Ah! Charles, you ought to have known me better. I stood amid sore
temptation to do so much. There were those who would have urged me on to
think that you had cast me from your heart for ever. There were those
ready and willing to place the worst construction upon your conduct, and
with a devilish ingenuity to strive to make me participate in such a
feeling; but, no, Charles, no--I loved you, and I trusted you, and I
could not so far belie my own judgment as to tell you other than what
you always seemed to my young fancy."

"And you are right, my Flora, right; and is it not a glorious triumph to
see that love--that sentiment of passion--has enabled you to have so
enduring and so noble a confidence in aught human?"

"Ay, Charles, it is the sentiment of passion, for our love has been more
a sentiment than a passion. I would fain think that we had loved each
other with an affection not usually known, appreciated, or understood,
and so, in the vanity of my best affections, I would strive to think
them something exclusive, and beyond the common feelings of humanity."

"And you are right, my Flora; such love as yours is the exception; there
may be preferences, there may be passions, and there may be sentiments,
but never, never, surely, was there a heart like yours."

"Nay, Charles, now you speak from a too poetical fancy; but is it
possible that I have had you here so long, with your hand clasped in
mine, and asked you not the causes of your absence?"

"Oh, Flora, I have suffered much--much physically, but more mentally. It
was the thought of you that was at once the bane and the antidote of my
existence."

"Indeed, Charles! Did I present myself in such contradictory colours to
you?"

"Yes, dearest, as thus. When I thought of you, sometimes, in the deep
seclusion of a dungeon, that thought almost goaded me to madness,
because it brought with it the conviction--a conviction peculiar to a
lover--that none could so effectually stand between you and all evil as
myself."

"Yes, yes, Charles; most true."

"It seemed to me as if all the world