His hair began to grow again, and curl as luxuriantly as ever.
Miss Clara was in raptures at his improved appearance, and seemed so lost in his company that she frequently came very near losing her conveyance, which would have been not only very annoying, but must have disclosed these frequent visits to her mother.
Mistress Haylark, in truth, often checked her daughter’s eloquence when discoursing of Charles and reminded her in a whisper that he was a “convict,” and that “it would not do to have anything to say, or even to know such a person.”
“Besides, my dear, you have good prospects in life, and money to receive when you marry; but if your ambition doesn’t run higher than to love a penniless fellow like him, without character or prospects, why then you are not ‘a Haylark,’ that’s all I can say about it.”
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.
Despite all that could be said by her mother to the contrary, Clara was constantly thinking and dreaming about Charles.
She had committed a grievous theft, and stole his likeness on ivory from Dame Worthington’s back parlour, and having made a case for it, hung it round her neck inside her bosom, and whenever feeling particular sentimental, she would draw it forth, kiss it, put it back again, and then indulge in that inexpensive luxury known to females as “a good cry!”
Miss Clara had fully made up her mind to marry Charles when he came forth from prison—that is, if she could get him.
But upon that point she sometimes had very serious misgivings.