Hal walked up to Flora. She was not contented with giving him one hand, but she placed both in his, and she looked up in his face with trusting confidence, and a sweet, loving expression in her eyes. A beaming aspect of hopefulness shone in her very lovely features which communicated its cheerful, sanguine anticipations to Hal.
“It shall go hard, dear Flora, but I win the wealth which shall make you mine,” he ejaculated, in fervent tones.
“Love gilds the humble roof, dear Hal,” she murmured; “anywhere, anywhere in the wide world, with your unfading, faithful love.”
“My undying, ever, ever faithful love,” he responded. “With my undying, ever, ever faithful love,” she echoed, as she pressed his hand, making him thrill with happiness.
And so they parted.
The ice about Mr. Wilton’s heart, in respect to their union, had begun to crack.
He gazed upon them very intently while they were conversing together, and he thought them certainly a very handsome young couple; and if personal attributes alone, were needful, a more fitting match could hardly be conceived.
Soon after Hal had quitted the house, Mark Wilton returned to the library to furnish his father with a brief narrative of what had taken place without the house, as well as in it, relative to the Honorable Lester Vane.
The miserable schemer’s affrighted leap had been attended with desperate results; fractured legs and arms attested the fearful violence with which he came to the ground; and he was conveyed, as soon as he was picked up, senseless to the nearest hospital, still in custody of an officer.
He was the mortgagor of an estate to Nathan Gomer, which had been already twice mortgaged to more than its value. The title-deeds he handed over were fresh ones he had had copied from the original draft, and were therefore fraudulent. The sight of Nathan Gomer, with an officer at his elbow, revealed to him the discovery that had been made; and, in his intense alarm, he leaped out of the window, in the hope of escape, but only to succeed in making himself a maimed cripple for life.