“What!” cried the admiral; “Miss Doll’s-eyes, are you taking her part?”

“Oh, that’s nothing.  She may call me what she likes.”

“I believe she is a good wife to the doctor,” said Henry, “notwithstanding his little eccentricities; but suppose we now at once make the proposal we were thinking of to Sir Francis Varney, and so get him to leave England as quickly as possible and put an end to the possibility of his being any more trouble to anybody.”

“Agreed—­agreed.  It’s the best thing that can be done, and it will be something gained to get his consent at once.”

“I’ll run up stairs to him,” said Charles, “and call him down at once.  I scarcely doubt for a moment his acquiescence in the proposal.”

Charles Holland rose, and ran up the little staircase of the cottage to the room which, by the kindness of the Bannerworth family, had been devoted to the use of Varney.  He had not been gone above two minutes, when he returned, hastily, with a small scrap of paper in his hand, which he laid before Henry, saying,—­

“There, what think you of that?”

Henry, upon taking up the paper, saw written upon it the words,—­

“The Farewell of Varney the Vampyre.”

“He is gone,” said Charles Holland.  “The room is vacant.  I saw at a glance that he had removed his hat, and cloak, and all that belonged to him.  He’s off, and at so short a warning, and in so abrupt a manner, that I fear the worst.”

“What can you fear?”

“I scarcely know what; but we have a right to fear everything and anything from his most inexplicable being, whose whole conduct has been of that mysterious nature, as to put him past all calculation as regards his motives, his objects, or his actions.  I must confess that I would have hailed his departure from England with feelings of satisfaction; but what he means now, by this strange manoeuvre, Heaven, and his own singular intellect, can alone divine.”

“I must confess,” said Flora, “I should not at all have thought this of Varney.  It seems to me as if something new must have occurred to him.  Altogether, I do not feel any alarm concerning his actions as regards us.  I am convinced of his sincerity, and, therefore, do not view with sensations of uneasiness this new circumstance, which appears at present so inexplicable, but for which we may yet get some explanation that will be satisfactory to us all.”

“I cannot conceive,” said Henry, “what new circumstances could have occurred to produce this effect upon Varney.  Things remain just as they were; and, after all, situated as he is, if any change had taken place in matters out of doors, I do not see how he could become acquainted with them, so that his leaving must have been a matter of mere calculation, or of impulse at the moment—­Heaven knows which—­but can have nothing to do with actual information, because it is quite evident he could not get it.”