She was always in his thoughts, and he was ashamed to confess to himself the precise nature of these, which, to say the truth, he could not analyse.
He strove, however, to dismiss her image from his mind, but the more he tried the less successful he seemed to be.
It was strange—indeed marvellous—but his was not a solitary case, either with churchmen, heroes, or sages, who are one and all open to the wiles and blandishments of an artful and designing beauty.
While the miserable and ill-fated pirate was tossing uneasily on his pallet, his mind filled with visions of the liberty he was never destined to realise, Mr. Leverall was giving more of his time to the prisoner in cell No. 43 than the exigencies of the case would seem to warrant, but nobody took heed of this.
It is true the two women attendants remarked to each other that the chaplain appeared to be a bit sweet on No. 43, but there was after all nothing surprising in this.
Ministers, like other men, had their favourites in the prison, and it was quite certain, so they averred, that Mr. Leverall had effected a great change in Miss Stanbridge, and it was equally certain, although they did not say so, that she had effected a still greater change in him.
On the morning after Murdock’s attempted escape Laura Stanbridge received another visit from the man who passed as her uncle.
Bandy-legged Bill brought her a fresh supply of money, and, in answer to her inquiries, informed her that he had called repeatedly at her house and informed the maid-servant that her mistress would return to London shortly.
He also said that Mr. Gatliffe had made repeated inquiries after her, and that Alf Purvis had been most insulting to him (Bill), declaring that he did not believe he had any authority to visit the house from its mistress.
As may be readily imagined, Bill retorted. In consequence of this a wordy war ensued, and Purvis ordered the gipsy not to show his face there again; but the latter, as he termed it, “was not to be sat upon” by a conceited puppy like that, and he, therefore, told him that if he gave him any “more of his cheek, he’d give him a prop in the eye” as soon as look at him.