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+The Project Gutenberg EBook What Will He Do With It, by Lytton, V4
+#90 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: What Will He Do With It, Book 4.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7662]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 1, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V4 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     In the kindliest natures there is a certain sensitiveness, which,
+     when wounded, occasions the same pain, and bequeaths the same
+     resentment, as mortified vanity or galled self-love.
+
+It is exactly that day week, towards the hour of five in the evening, Mr.
+Hartopp, alone in the parlour behind his warehouse, is locking up his
+books and ledgers preparatory to the return to his villa.  There is a
+certain change in the expression of his countenance since we saw it last.
+If it be possible for Mr. Hartopp to look sullen,--sullen he looks; if it
+be possible for the Mayor of Gatesboro' to be crestfallen, crestfallen he
+is.  That smooth existence has surely received some fatal concussion, and
+has not yet recovered the shock.  But if you will glance beyond the
+parlour at Mr. Williams giving orders in the warehouse, at the
+warehousemen themselves, at the rough faces in the tan-yard,-nay, at Mike
+Callaghan, who has just brought a parcel from the railway, all of them
+have evidently shared in the effects of the concussion; all of them wear
+a look more or less sullen; all seem crestfallen.  Could you carry
+your gaze farther on, could you peep into the shops in the High Street,
+or at the loungers in the city reading-room; could you extend the vision
+farther still,--to Mr. Hartopp's villa, behold his wife, his little ones,
+his men-servants, and his maid-servants, more and more impressively
+general would become the tokens of disturbance occasioned by that
+infamous concussion.  Everywhere a sullen look,--everywhere that
+ineffable aspect of crestfallenness!  What can have happened?  is the
+good man bankrupt?  No, rich as ever!  What can it be?  Reader! that
+fatal event which they who love Josiah Hartopp are ever at watch to
+prevent, despite all their vigilance, has occurred!  Josiah Hartopp has
+been TAKEN IN!  Other men may be occasionally taken in, and no one
+mourns; perhaps they deserve it! they are not especially benevolent, or
+they set up to be specially wise.  But to take in that lamb!  And it was
+not only the Mayor's heart that was wounded, but his pride, his self-
+esteem, his sense of dignity, were terribly humiliated.  For as we know,
+though all the world considered Mr. Hartopp the very man born to be taken
+in, and therefore combined to protect him, yet in his secret soul Mr.
+Hartopp considered that no man less needed such protection; that he was
+never taken in, unless he meant to be so.  Thus the cruelty and
+ingratitude of the base action under which his crest was so fallen jarred
+on his whole system.  Nay, more, he could not but feel that the event
+would long affect his personal comfort and independence; he would be more
+than ever under the affectionate tyranny of Mr. Williams, more than ever
+be an object of universal surveillance and espionage.  There would be one
+thought paramount throughout Gatesboro'.  "The Mayor, God bless him!  has
+been taken in: this must not occur again, or Gatesboro' is dishonoured,
+and Virtue indeed a name!"  Mr. Hartopp felt not only mortified but
+subjugated,--he who had hitherto been the soft subjugator of the hardest.
+He felt not only subjugated, but indignant at the consciousness of being
+so.  He was too meekly convinced of Heaven's unerring justice not to feel
+assured that the man who had taken him in would come to a tragic end.  He
+would not have hung that man with his own hands: he was too mild for
+vengeance.  But if he had seen that man hanging he would have said
+piously, "Fitting retribution," and passed on his way soothed and
+comforted.  Taken in!--taken in at last!--he, Josiah Hartopp, taken
+in by a fellow with one eye!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     The Mayor is so protected that be cannot help himself.
+
+A commotion without,--a kind of howl, a kind of hoot.  Mr. Williams, the
+warehousemen, the tanners, Mike Callaghan, share between them the howl
+and the hoot.  The Mayor started: is it possible!  His door is burst
+open, and, scattering all who sought to hold him back,--scattering them
+to the right and left from his massive torso in rushed the man who had
+taken in the Mayor,--the fellow with one eye, and with that fellow,
+shaggy and travel-soiled, the other dog!
+
+"What have you done with the charge I intrusted to you?  My child!  my
+child!  where is she?"
+
+Waife's face was wild with the agony of his emotions, and his voice was
+so sharply terrible that it went like a knife into the heart of the men,
+who, thrust aside for the moment, now followed him, fearful, into the
+room.
+
+"Mr.--Mr. Chapman, sir," faltered the Mayor, striving hard to recover
+dignity and self-possession, "I am astonished at your--your--"
+
+"Audacity!"  interposed Mr. Williams.
+
+"My child! my Sophy! my child! answer me, man!"  "Sir," said the Mayor,
+drawing himself up, "have you not got the note which I left at my
+bailiff's cottage in case you called there?"
+
+"Your note! this thing!"  said Waife, striking a crumpled paper with his
+hand, and running his eye over its contents.  "You have rendered up, you
+say, the child to her lawful protector?  Gracious heavens!  did I trust
+her to you, or not?"
+
+"Leave the room all of you," said the Mayor, with a sudden return of his
+usual calm vigour.
+
+"You go,--you, sirs; what the deuce do you do here?" growled Williams to
+the meaner throng.  "Out!  I stay, never fear, men, I'll take care of
+him!"
+
+The bystanders surlily slunk off: but none returned to their work; they
+stood within reach of call by the shut door.  Williams tucked up his
+coat-sleeves, clenched his fists, hung his head doggedly on one side, and
+looked altogether so pugnacious and minatory that Sir Isaac, who, though
+in a state of great excitement, had hitherto retained self-control,
+peered at him under his curls, stiffened his back, showed his teeth, and
+growled formidably.
+
+"My good Williams, leave us," said the Mayor; "I would be alone with this
+person."
+
+"Alone,--you!  out of the question.  Now you have been once taken in, and
+you own it,--it is my duty to protect you henceforth; and I will to the
+end of my days."
+
+The Mayor sighed heavily.  "Well, Williams, well!--take a chair, and be
+quiet.  Now, Mr. Chapman, so to call you still; you have deceived me."
+
+"I? how?"
+
+The Mayor was puzzled.  "Deceived me," he said at last, "in my knowledge
+of human nature.  I thought you an honest man, sir.  And you are--but no
+matter."
+
+WAIFE (impatiently).--"My child!  my child!  you have given her up to--
+to--"
+
+MAYOR.--"Her own father, sir."
+
+WAIFE (echoing the words as he staggers back).--"I thought so! I thought
+it!"
+
+MAYOR.--"In so doing I obeyed the law: he had legal power to enforce his
+demand."  The Mayor's voice was almost apologetic in its tone; for he was
+affected by Waife's anguish, and not able to silence a pang of remorse.
+After all, he had been trusted; and he had, excusably perhaps,
+necessarily perhaps, but still he had failed to fulfil the trust.  "But,"
+added the Mayor, as if reassuring himself, "but I refused at first to
+give her up even to her own father; at first insisted upon waiting till
+your return; and it was only when I was informed what you yourself were
+that my scruples gave Way."
+
+Waife remained long silent, breathing very hard, passing his hand several
+times over his forehead; at last he said more quietly than he had yet
+spoken, "Will you tell me where they have gone?"
+
+"I do not know; and, if I did know, I would not tell you!  Are they not
+right when they say that that innocent child should not be tempted away
+by--by--a--in short by you, sir?"
+
+"They said!  Her father--said that!--he said that!--Did he--did he say
+it?  Had he the heart?"
+
+MAYOR.--"No, I don't think he said it.  Eh, Mr. Williams?  He spoke
+little to me!"
+
+MR. WILLIAMS.--"Of course he would not expose that person.  But the
+woman,--the lady, I mean."
+
+WAIFE.--"Woman!  Ah, yes.  The bailiff's wife said there was a woman.
+What woman?  What's her name?"
+
+MAYOR.--"Really you must excuse me.  I can say no more.  I have consented
+to see you thus, because whatever you might have been, or may be, still
+it was due to myself to explain how I came to give up the child; and,
+besides, you left money with me, and that, at least, I can give to your
+own hand."
+
+The Mayor turned to his desk, unlocked it, and drew forth the bag which
+Waife had sent to him.
+
+As he extended it towards the Comedian, his hand trembled, and his cheek
+flushed.  For Waife's one bright eye had in it such depth of reproach,
+that again the Mayor's conscience was sorely troubled; and he would have
+given ten times the contents of that bag to have been alone with the
+vagrant, and to have said the soothing things he did not dare to say
+before Williams, who sat there mute and grim, guarding him from being
+once more "taken in."  "If you had confided in me at first, Mr. Chapman,"
+he said, pathetically, "or even if now, I could aid you in an honest way
+of life!"
+
+"Aid him--now!"  said Williams, with a snort.  "At it again!  you're not
+a man: you're an angel!"
+
+"But if he is penitent, Williams."
+
+"So! so! so!" murmured Waife.  "Thank Heaven it was not he who spoke
+against me: it was but a strange woman.  Oh!" he suddenly broke off with
+a groan.  "Oh--but that strange woman,--who, what can she be? and Sophy
+with her and him.  Distraction!  Yes, yes, I take the money.  I shall
+want it all.  Sir Isaac, pick up that bag.  Gentlemen, good day to you!"
+He bowed; such a failure that bow!  Nothing ducal in it! bowed and
+turned towards the door; then, when he gained the threshold, as if some
+meeker, holier thought restored to him dignity of bearing, his form rose,
+though his face softened, and stretching his right hand towards the
+Mayor, he said, "You did but as all perhaps would have done on the
+evidence before you.  You meant to be kind to her."
+
+"If you knew all, how you would repent!  I do not blame,--I forgive you."
+
+He was gone: the Mayor stood transfixed.  Even Williams felt a cold
+comfortless thrill.  "He does not look like it," said the foreman.
+"Cheer up, sir, no wonder you were taken in: who would not have been?"
+
+"Hark! that hoot again.  Go, Williams, don't let the men insult him.  Go,
+do,--I shall be grateful."
+
+But before Williams got to the door, the cripple and his dog had
+vanished; vanished down a dark narrow alley on the opposite side of the
+street.  The rude workmen had followed him to the mouth of the alley,
+mocking him.  Of the exact charge against the Comedian's good name they
+were not informed; that knowledge was confined to the Mayor and Mr.
+Williams.  But the latter had dropped such harsh expressions, that bad as
+the charge might really be, all in Mr. Hartopp's employment probably
+deemed it worse, if possible, than it really was.  And wretch indeed must
+be the man by whom the Mayor had been confessedly taken in, and whom the
+Mayor had indignantly given up to the reproaches of his own conscience.
+But the cripple was now out of sight, lost amidst those labyrinths of
+squalid homes which, in great towns, are thrust beyond view, branching
+off abruptly behind High Streets and Market Places, so that strangers
+passing only along the broad thoroughfares, with glittering shops and
+gaslit causeways, exclaim, "Ah here do the poor live?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Ecce iterum Crispinus!
+
+It was by no calculation, but by involuntary impulse, that Waife, thus
+escaping from the harsh looks and taunting murmurs of the gossips round
+the Mayor's door, dived into those sordid devious lanes.  Vaguely he felt
+that a ban was upon him; that the covering he had thrown over his brand
+of outcast was lifted up; that a sentence of expulsion from the High
+Streets and Market Places of decorous life was passed against him.  He
+had been robbed of his child, and Society, speaking in the voice of the
+Mayor of Gatesboro', said, "Rightly!  thou art not fit companion for the
+innocent!"
+
+At length he found himself out of the town, beyond its straggling
+suburbs, and once more on the solitary road.  He had already walked far
+that day.  He was thoroughly exhausted.  He sat himself down in a dry
+ditch by the hedgerow, and taking his head between his hands, strove to
+recollect his thoughts and rearrange his plans.
+
+Waife had returned that day to the bailiff's cottage joyous and elated.
+He had spent the week in travelling; partly, though not all the way, on
+foot, to the distant village, in which he had learned in youth the
+basketmaker's art!  He had found the very cottage wherein he had then
+lodged vacant and to be let.  There seemed a ready opening for the humble
+but pleasant craft to which he had diverted his ambition.
+
+The bailiff intrusted with the letting of the cottage and osier-ground
+had, it is true, requested some reference; not, of course, as to all a
+tenant's antecedents, but as to the reasonable probability that the
+tenant would be a quiet sober man, who would pay his rent and abstain
+from poaching.  Waife thought he might safely presume that the Mayor of
+Gatesboro' would not, so far as that went, object to take his VOL.  i.-IS
+past upon trust, and give him a good word towards securing so harmless
+and obscure a future.  Waife had never before asked such a favour of any
+man; he shrank from doing so now; but for his grandchild's sake, he would
+waive his scruples or humble his pride.
+
+Thus, then, he had come back, full of Elysian dreams, to his Sophy,
+--his Enchanted Princess.  Gone, taken away, and with the Mayor's
+consent,--the consent of the very man upon whom he had been relying to
+secure a livelihood and a shelter!  Little more had he learned at the
+cottage, for Mr. and Mrs. Gooch had been cautioned to be as brief as
+possible, and give him no clew to regain his lost treasure, beyond the
+note which informed him it was with a lawful possessor.  And, indeed, the
+worthy pair were now prejudiced against the vagrant, and were rude to
+him.  But he had not tarried to cross-examine and inquire.  He had rushed
+at once to the Mayor.  Sophy was with one whose legal right to dispose of
+her he could not question.  But where that person would take her, where
+he resided, what he would do with her, he had no means to conjecture.
+Most probably (he thought and guessed) she would be carried abroad, was
+already out of the country.  But the woman with Losely, he had not heard
+her described; his guesses did not turn towards Mrs. Crane: the woman was
+evidently hostile to him; it was the woman who had spoken against him,--
+not Losely; the woman whose tongue had poisoned Hartopp's mind, and
+turned into scorn all that admiring respect which had before greeted the
+great Comedian.  Why was that woman his enemy?  Who could she be?  What
+had she to do with Sophy?  He was half beside himself with terror.  It
+was to save her less even from Losely than from such direful women as
+Losely made his confidants and associates that Waife had taken Sophy to
+himself.  As for Mrs. Crane, she had never seemed a foe to him; she had
+ceded the child to him willingly: he had no reason to believe, from the
+way in which she had spoken of Losely when he last saw her, that she
+could henceforth aid the interests or share the schemes of the man whose
+perfidies she then denounced; and as to Rugge, he had not appeared at
+Gatesboro'.  Mrs. Crane had prudently suggested that his presence would
+not be propitiatory or discreet, and that all reference to him, or to the
+contract with him, should be suppressed.  Thus Waife was wholly without
+one guiding evidence, one groundwork for conjecture, that might enable
+him to track the lost; all he knew was, that she had been given up to a
+man whose whereabouts it was difficult to discover,--a vagrant, of life
+darker and more hidden than his own.
+
+But how had the hunters discovered the place where he had treasured up
+his Sophy? how dogged that retreat?  Perhaps from the village in which we
+first saw him.  Ay, doubtless, learned from Mrs. Saunders of the dog he
+had purchased, and the dog would have served to direct them on his path.
+At that thought he pushed away Sir Isaac, who had been resting his head
+on the old man's knee,--pushed him away angrily; the poor dog slunk off
+in sorrowful surprise, and whined.
+
+"Ungrateful wretch that I am!"  cried Waife, and he opened his arms to
+the brute, who bounded forgivingly to his breast.
+
+"Come, come, we will go back to the village in Surrey.  Tramp, tramp!"
+said the cripple, rousing himself.  And at that moment, just as he gained
+his feet, a friendly hand was laid on his shoulder, and a friendly voice
+said,
+
+"I have found you! the crystal said so!  Marbellous!"
+
+"Merle," faltered out the vagrant, "Merle, you here!  Oh, perhaps you
+come to tell me good news: you have seen Sophy; you know where she is!"
+
+The Cobbler shook his head.  "Can't see her just at present.  Crystal
+says nout about her.  But I know she was taken from you--and--and--you
+shake tremenjous!  Lean on me, Mr. Waite, and call off that big animal.
+He's a suspicating my calves and circumtittyvating them.  Thank ye, sir.
+You see I was born with sinister aspects in my Twelfth House, which
+appertains to big animals and enemies; and dogs of that size about one's
+calves are--malefics!"
+
+As Merle now slowly led the cripple, and Sir Isaac, relinquishing his
+first suspicions, walked droopingly beside them, the Cobbler began a long
+story, much encumbered by astrological illustrations and moralizing
+comments.  The substance of his narrative is thus epitomized: Rugge, in
+pursuing Waife's track, had naturally called on Merle in company with
+Losely and Mrs. Crane.  The Cobbler had no clew to give, and no mind to
+give it if clew he had possessed.  But his curiosity being roused, he had
+smothered the inclination to dismiss the inquirers with more speed than
+good breeding, and even refreshed his slight acquaintance with Mr. Rugge
+in so well simulated a courtesy that that gentleman, when left behind by
+Losely and Mrs. Crane in their journey to Gatesboro', condescended, for
+want of other company, to drink tea with Mr. Merle; and tea being
+succeeded by stronger potations, he fairly unbosomed himself of his hopes
+of recovering Sophy and his ambition of hiring the York theatre.
+
+The day afterwards Rugge went away seemingly in high spirits, and the
+Cobbler had no doubt, from some words he let fall in passing Merle's
+stall towards the railway, that Sophy was recaptured, and that Rugge was
+summoned to take possession of her.  Ascertaining from the manager that
+Losely and Mrs. Crane had gone to Gatesboro', the Cobbler called to mind
+that he had a sister living there, married to a green-grocer in a very
+small way, whom he had not seen for many years; and finding his business
+slack just then, he resolved to pay this relative a, visit, with the
+benevolent intention of looking up Waife, whom he expected from Rugge's
+account to find there, and offering him any consolation or aid in his
+power, should Sophy have been taken from him against his will.  A
+consultation with his crystal, which showed him the face of Mr. Waife
+alone and much dejected, and a horary scheme which promised success to
+his journey, decided his movements.  He had arrived at Gatesboro' the day
+before, had heard a confused story about a Mr. Chapman, with his dog and
+his child, whom the Mayor had first taken up, but who afterwards, in some
+mysterious manner, had taken in the Mayor.  Happily, the darker gossip in
+the High Street had not penetrated the back lane in which Merle's sister
+resided.  There, little more was known than the fact that this mysterious
+stranger had imposed on the wisdom of Gatesboro's learned Institute and
+enlightened Mayor.  Merle, at no loss to identify Waife with Chapman,
+could only suppose that he had been discovered to be a strolling player
+in Rugge's exhibition, after pretending to be some much greater man.
+Such an offence the Cobbler was not disposed to consider heinous.  But
+Mr. Chapman was gone from Gatesboro' none knew whither; and Merle had not
+yet ventured to call himself on the chief magistrate of the place, to
+inquire after a man by whom that august personage had been deceived.
+"Howsomever," quoth Merle, in conclusion, "I was just standing at my
+sister's door, with her last babby in my arms, in Scrob Lane, when I saw
+you pass by like a shot.  You were gone while I ran in to give up the
+babby, who is teething, with malefics in square,--gone, clean out of
+sight.  You took one turn; I took another: but you see we meet at last,
+as good men always do in this world or the other, which is the same thing
+in the long run."
+
+Waife, who had listened to his friend without other interruption than an
+occasional nod of the head or interjectional expletive, was now restored
+to much of his constitutional mood of sanguine cheerfulness.  He
+recognized Mrs. Crane in the woman described; and, if surprised, he was
+rejoiced.  For, much as he disliked that gentlewoman, he thought Sophy
+might be in worse female hands.  Without much need of sagacity, he
+divined the gist of the truth.  Losely had somehow or other become
+acquainted with Rugge, and sold Sophy to the manager.  Where Rugge was,
+there would Sophy be.  It could not be very difficult to find out the
+place in which Rugge was now exhibiting; and then--ah then!  Waife
+whistled to Sir Isaac, tapped his forehead, and smiled triumphantly.
+Meanwhile the Cobbler had led him back into the suburb, with the kind
+intention of offering him food and bed for the night at his sister's
+house.  But Waife had already formed his plan; in London, and in London
+alone, could he be sure to learn where Rugge was now exhibiting; in
+London there were places at which that information could be gleaned at
+once.  The last train to the metropolis was not gone.  He would slink
+round the town to the station: he and Sir Isaac at that hour might secure
+places unnoticed.
+
+When Merle found it was in vain to press him to stay over the night, the
+good-hearted Cobbler accompanied him to the train, and, while Waife
+shrank into a dark corner, bought the tickets for dog and master.  As he
+was paying for these, he overheard two citizens talking of Mr. Chapman.
+It was indeed Mr. Williams explaining to a fellow-burgess just returned
+to Gatesboro', after a week's absence, how and by what manner of man Mr.
+Hartopp had been taken in.  At what Williams said, the Cobbler's cheek
+paled.  When he joined the Comedian his manner was greatly altered; he
+gave the tickets without speaking, but looked hard into Waife's face, as
+the latter repaid him the fares.  "No," said the Cobbler, suddenly, "I
+don't believe it."
+
+"Believe what?"  asked Waife, startled.  "That you are--"
+
+The Cobbler paused, bent forward, whispered the rest of the sentence
+close in the vagrant's ear.  Waife's head fell on his bosom, but he made
+no answer.
+
+"Speak," cried Merle; "say 't is a lie."  The poor cripple's lip writhed,
+but he still spoke not.
+
+Merle looked aghast at that obstinate silence.  At length, but very
+slowly, as the warning bell summoned him and Sir Isaac to their several
+places in the train, Waife found voice.  "So you too, you too desert and
+despise me!  God's will be done!"  He moved away,--spiritless, limping,
+hiding his face as well as he could.  The porter took the dog from him,
+to thrust it into one of the boxes reserved for such four-footed
+passengers.
+
+Waife thus parted from his last friend--I mean the dog--looked after Sir
+Isaac wistfully, and crept into a third-class carriage, in which luckily
+there was no one else.  Suddenly Merle jumped in, snatched his hand, and
+pressed it tightly.
+
+"I don't despise, I don't turn my back on you: whenever you and the
+little one want a home and a friend, come to Kit Merle as before, and
+I'll bite my tongue out if I ask any more questions of you; I'll ask the
+stars instead."
+
+The Cobbler had but just time to splutter out these comforting words and
+redescend the carriage, when the train put itself into movement, and the
+lifelike iron miracle, fuming, hissing, and screeching, bore off to
+London its motley convoy of human beings, each passenger's heart a
+mystery to the other, all bound the same road, all wedged close within
+the same whirling mechanism; what a separate and distinct world in each!
+Such is Civilization!  How like we are one to the other in the mass!  how
+strangely dissimilar in the abstract!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     "If," says a great thinker (Degerando, "/Du Perfectionment Moral/,"
+     chapter ix., "On the Difficulties we encounter in Self-Study")--"if
+     one concentrates reflection too much on one's self, one ends by no
+     longer seeing anything, or seeing only what one wishes.  By the very
+     act, as it were, of capturing one's self, the personage we believe
+     we have seized escapes, disappears.  Nor is it only the complexity
+     of our inner being which obstructs our examination, but its
+     exceeding variability.  The investigator's regard should embrace all
+     the sides of the subject, and perseveringly pursue all its phases."
+
+It is the race-week in Humberston, a county town far from Gatesboro', and
+in the north of England.  The races last three days: the first day is
+over; it has been a brilliant spectacle; the course crowded with the
+carriages of provincial magnates, with equestrian betters of note from
+the metropolis; blacklegs in great muster; there have been gaming-booths
+on the ground, and gypsies telling fortunes; much champagne imbibed by
+the well-bred, much soda-water and brandy by the vulgar.  Thousands and
+tens of thousands have been lost and won: some paupers have been for the
+time enriched; some rich men made poor for life.  Horses have won fame;
+some of their owners lost character.  Din and uproar, and coarse oaths,
+and rude passions,--all have had their hour.  The amateurs of the higher
+classes have gone back to dignified country-houses, as courteous hosts
+or favoured guests.  The professional speculators of a lower grade have
+poured back into the county town, and inns and taverns are crowded.
+Drink is hotly called for at reeking bars; waiters and chambermaids pass
+to and fro, with dishes and tankards and bottles in their hands.  All is
+noise and bustle, and eating and swilling, and disputation and slang,
+wild glee, and wilder despair, amongst those who come back from the race-
+course to the inns in the county town.  At one of these taverns, neither
+the best nor the worst, and in a small narrow slice of a room that seemed
+robbed from the landing-place, sat Mrs. Crane, in her iron-gray silk
+gown.  She was seated close by the open window, as carriages, chaises,
+flies, carts, vans, and horsemen succeeded each other thick and fast,
+watching the scene with a soured, scornful look.  For human joy, as for
+human grief, she had little sympathy.  Life had no Saturnalian holidays
+left for her.  Some memory in her past had poisoned the well-springs of
+her social being.  Hopes and objects she had still, but out of the wrecks
+of the natural and healthful existence of womanhood, those objects and
+hopes stood forth exaggerated, intense, as are the ruling passions in
+monomania.  A bad woman is popularly said to be worse than a wicked man.
+If so, partly because women, being more solitary, brood more unceasingly
+over cherished ideas, whether good or evil; partly also, for the same
+reason that makes a wicked gentleman, who has lost caste and character,
+more irreclaimable than a wicked clown, low-born and lowbred, namely,
+that in proportion to the loss of shame is the gain in recklessness: but
+principally, perhaps, because in extreme wickedness there is necessarily
+a distortion of the reasoning faculty; and man, accustomed from the
+cradle rather to reason than to feel, has that faculty more firm against
+abrupt twists and lesions than it is in woman; where virtue may have left
+him, logic may still linger; and he may decline to push evil to a point
+at which it is clear to his understanding that profit vanishes and
+punishment rests; while woman, once abandoned to ill, finds sufficient
+charm in its mere excitement, and, regardless of consequences, where the
+man asks, "Can I?" raves out, "I will!"  Thus man may be criminal through
+cupidity, vanity, love, jealousy, fear, ambition; rarely in civilized,
+that is, reasoning life, through hate and revenge; for hate is a
+profitless investment, and revenge a ruinous speculation.  But when women
+are thoroughly depraved and hardened, nine times out of ten it is hatred
+or revenge that makes them so.  Arabella Crane had not, however, attained
+to that last state of wickedness, which, consistent in evil, is callous
+to remorse; she was not yet unsexed.  In her nature was still that
+essence, "varying and mutable," which distinguishes woman while womanhood
+is left to her.  And now, as she sat gazing on the throng below, her
+haggard mind recoiled perhaps from the conscious shadow of the Evil
+Principle which, invoked as an ally, remains as a destroyer.  Her dark
+front relaxed; she moved in her seat uneasily.  "Must it be always thus?"
+she muttered,--"always this hell here!  Even now, if in one large pardon
+I could include the undoer, the earth, myself, and again be human,--
+human, even as those slight triflers or coarse brawlers that pass yonder!
+Oh, for something in common with common life!"
+
+Her lips closed, and her eyes again fell upon the crowded street.  At
+that moment three or four heavy vans or wagons filled with operatives or
+labourers and their wives, coming back from the race-course, obstructed
+the way; two outriders in satin jackets were expostulating, cracking
+their whips, and seeking to clear space for an open carriage with four
+thoroughbred impatient horses.  Towards that carriage every gazer from
+the windows was directing eager eyes; each foot-passenger on the pavement
+lifted his hat: evidently in that carriage some great person!  Like all
+who are at war with the world as it is, Arabella Crane abhorred the
+great, and despised the small for worshipping the great.  But still her
+own fierce dark eyes mechanically followed those of the vulgar.  The
+carriage bore a marquess's coronet on its panels, and was filled with
+ladies; two other carriages bearing a similar coronet, and evidently
+belonging to the same party, were in the rear.  Mrs. Crane started.  In
+that first carriage, as it now slowly moved under her very window, and
+paused a minute or more till the obstructing vehicles in front were
+marshalled into order, there flashed upon her eyes a face radiant with
+female beauty in its most glorious prime.  Amongst the crowd at that
+moment was a blind man, adding to the various discords of the street by a
+miserable hurdy-gurdy.  In the movement of the throng to get nearer to a
+sight of the ladies in the carriage, this poor creature was thrown
+forward; the dog that led him, an ugly brute, on his own account or his
+master's took fright, broke from the string, and ran under the horses'
+hoofs, snarling.  The horses became restive; the blind man made a plunge
+after his dog, and was all but run over.  The lady in the first carriage,
+alarmed for his safety, rose up from her seat, and made her outriders
+dismount, lead away the poor blind man, and restore to him his dog.  Thus
+engaged, her face shone full upon Arabella Crane; and with that face
+rushed a tide of earlier memories.  Long, very long, since she had seen
+that face,--seen it in those years when she herself, Arabella Crane, was
+young and handsome.
+
+The poor man,--who seemed not to realize the idea of the danger he had
+escaped,--once more safe, the lady resumed her seat; and now that the
+momentary animation of humane fear and womanly compassion passed from her
+countenance, its expression altered; it took the calm, almost the
+coldness, of a Greek statue.  But with the calm there was a listless
+melancholy which Greek sculpture never gives to the Parian stone: stone
+cannot convey that melancholy; it is the shadow which needs for its
+substance a living, mortal heart.
+
+Crack went the whips: the horses bounded on; the equipage rolled fast
+down the street, followed by its satellites.  "Well!"  said a voice in
+the street below, "I never saw Lady Montfort in such beauty.  Ah, here
+comes my lord!"
+
+Mrs. Crane heard and looked forth again.  A dozen or more gentlemen on
+horseback rode slowly up the street; which of these was Lord Montfort?--
+not difficult to distinguish.  As the bystanders lifted their hats to the
+cavalcade, the horsemen generally returned their salutation by simply
+touching their own: one horseman uncovered wholly.  That one must be the
+Marquess, the greatest man in those parts, with lands stretching away on
+either side that town for miles and miles,--a territory which in feudal
+times might have alarmed a king.  He, the civilest, must be the greatest.
+A man still young, decidedly good-looking, wonderfully well-dressed,
+wonderfully well-mounted, the careless ease of high rank in his air and
+gesture.  To the superficial gaze, just what the great Lord of Montfort
+should be.  Look again!  In that fair face is there not something that
+puts you in mind of a florid period which contains a feeble platitude?--
+something in its very prettiness that betrays a weak nature and a sterile
+mind?
+
+The cavalcade passed away; the vans and the wagons again usurped the
+thoroughfare.  Arabella Crane left the window, and approached the little
+looking-glass over the mantelpiece.  She gazed upon her own face
+bitterly; she was comparing it with the features of the dazzling
+marchioness.
+
+The door was flung open, and Jasper Losely sauntered in, whistling a
+French air, and flapping the dust from his boots with his kid glove.
+
+"All right," said he, gayly.  "A famous day of it!"
+
+"You have won," said Mrs. Crane, in a tone rather of disappointment than
+congratulation.
+
+"Yes.  That L100 of Rugge's has been the making of me."
+
+"I only wanted a capital just to start with!"  He flung himself into a
+chair, opened his pocket-book, and scrutinized its contents.  "Guess,"
+said he, suddenly, "on whose horse I won these two rouleaux?  Lord
+Montfort's!  Ay, and I saw my lady!"
+
+"So did I see her from this window.  She did not look happy!"
+
+"Not happy!--with such an equipage,--neatest turn-out I ever set eyes on;
+not happy, indeed!  I had half a mind to ride up to her carriage and
+advance a claim to her gratitude."
+
+"Gratitude?  Oh, for your part in that miserable affair of which you told
+me?"
+
+"Not a miserable affair for her; but certainly I never got any good from
+it.  Trouble for nothing!  /Basta!/  No use looking back."
+
+"No use; but who can help it?" said Arabella Crane, sighing heavily;
+then, as if eager to change the subject, she added abruptly, "Mr. Rugge
+has been here twice this morning, highly excited the child will not act.
+He says you are bound to make her do so!"
+
+"Nonsense.  That is his look-out.  I see after children, indeed!"
+
+MRS. CRANE (with a visible effort).--"Listen to me, Jasper Losely.  I
+have no reason to love that child, as you may suppose.  But now that you
+so desert her, I think I feel compassion for her; and when this morning I
+raised my hand to strike her for her stubborn spirit, and saw her eyes
+unflinching, and her pale, pale, but fearless face, my arm fell to my
+side powerless.  She will not take to this life without the old man.
+She will waste away and die."
+
+LOSELY.--"How you bother me!  Are you serious?  What am I to do?"
+
+MRS. CRANE.--"You have won money you say; revoke the contract; pay Rugge
+back his L100.  He is disappointed in his bargain; he will take the
+money."
+
+LOSELY.--"I dare say he will indeed!  No: I have won to-day, it is true,
+but I may lose to-morrow; and besides I am in want of so many things:
+when one gets a little money, one has an immediate necessity for more--
+ha! ha!  Still I would not have the child die; and she may grow up to be
+of use.  I tell you what I will do; if, when the races are over, I find I
+have gained enough to afford it, I will see about buying her off.  But
+L100 is too much!  Rugge ought to take half the money, or a quarter,
+because, if she don't act, I suppose she does eat."
+
+Odious as the man's words were, he said them with a laugh that seemed to
+render them less revolting,--the laugh of a very handsome mouth, showing
+teeth still brilliantly white.  More comely than usual that day, for he
+was in great good-humour, it was difficult to conceive that a man with so
+healthful and fair an exterior was really quite rotten at heart.
+
+"Your own young laugh," said Arabella Crane, almost tenderly.  "I know
+not how it is, but this day I feel as if I were less old,--altered though
+I be in face and mind.  I have allowed myself to pity that child; while I
+speak, I can pity you.  Yes! pity,--when I think of what you were.  Must
+you go on thus?  To what!  Jasper Losely," she continued, sharply,
+eagerly, clasping her hands, "hear me: I have an income, not large, it is
+true, but assured; you have nothing but what, as you say, you may lose
+to-morrow; share my income!  Fulfil your solemn promises: marry me.  I
+will forget whose daughter that girl is; I will be a mother to her.  And
+for yourself, give me the right to feel for you again as I once did, and
+I may find a way to raise you yet,--higher than you can raise yourself.
+I have some wit, Jasper, as you know.  At the worst you shall have the
+pastime, I the toil.  In your illness I will nurse you: in your joys I
+will intrude no share.  Whom else can you marry? to whom else could you
+confide?  who else could--"
+
+She stopped short as if an adder had stung her, uttering a shriek of
+rage, of pain; for Jasper Losely, who had hitherto listened to her,
+stupefied, astounded, here burst into a fit of merriment, in which there
+was such undisguised contempt, such an enjoyment of the ludicrous,
+provoked by the idea of the marriage pressed upon him, that the insult
+pierced the woman to her very soul.
+
+Continuing his laugh, despite that cry of wrathful agony it had caused,
+Jasper rose, holding his sides, and surveying himself in the glass, with
+very different feelings at the sight from those that had made his
+companion's gaze there a few minutes before so mournful.
+
+"My dear good friend," he said, composing himself at last, and wiping his
+eyes, "excuse me, but really when you said whom else could I marry--ha!
+ha!--it did seem such a capital joke!  Marry you, my fair Crane!  No: put
+that idea out of your head; we know each other too well for conjugal
+felicity.  You love me now: you always did, and always will; that is,
+while we are not tied to each other.  Women who once love me, always love
+me; can't help themselves.  I am sure I don't know why, except that I am
+what they call a villain!  Ha! the clock striking seven: I dine with a
+set of fellows I have picked up on the race-ground; they don't know me,
+nor I them; we shall be better acquainted after the third bottle.  Cheer
+up, Crane: go and scold Sophy, and make her act if you can; if not, scold
+Rugge into letting her alone.  Scold somebody; nothing like it, to keep
+other folks quiet, and one's self busy.  Adieu! and pray, no more
+matrimonial solicitations: they frighten me!  Gad," added Losely, as he
+banged the door, "such overtures would frighten Old Nick himself!"
+
+Did Arabella Crane hear those last words,--or had she not heard enough?
+If Losely had turned and beheld her face, would it have startled back his
+trivial laugh?  Possibly; but it would have caused only a momentary
+uneasiness.  If Alecto herself had reared over him her brow horrent with
+vipers, Jasper Losely would have thought he had only to look handsome and
+say coaxingly, "Alecto, my dear," and the Fury would have pawned her
+head-dress to pay his washing-bill.
+
+After all, in the face of the grim woman he had thus so wantonly
+incensed, there was not so much menace as resolve.  And that resolve was
+yet more shown in the movement of the hands than in the aspect of the
+countenance; those hands--lean, firm, nervous hands--slowly expanded,
+then as slowly clenched, as if her own thought had taken substance, and
+she was locking it in a clasp--tightly, tightly--never to be loosened
+till the pulse was still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     The most submissive where they love may be the most stubborn where
+     they do not love.--Sophy is stubborn to Mr. Rugge.--That injured man
+     summons to his side Mrs. Crane, imitating the policy of those
+     potentates who would retrieve the failures of force by the successes
+     of diplomacy.
+
+Mr. Rugge has obtained his object.  But now comes the question, "What
+will he do with it?"  Question with as many heads as the Hydra; and no
+sooner does an author dispose of one head than up springs another.
+
+Sophy has been bought and paid for: she is now, legally, Mr. Rugge's
+property.  But there was a wise peer who once bought Punch: Punch became
+his property, and was brought in triumph to his lordship's house.  To my
+lord's great dismay, Punch would not talk.  To Rugge's great dismay,
+Sophy would not act.
+
+Rendered up to Jasper Losely and Mrs. Crane, they had lost not an hour
+in removing her from Gatesboro' and its neighbourhood.  They did not,
+however, go back to the village in which they had left Rugge, but
+returned straight to London, and wrote to the manager to join them there.
+
+Sophy, once captured, seemed stupefied: she evinced no noisy passion; she
+made no violent resistance.  When she was told to love and obey a father
+in Jasper Losely, she lifted her eyes to his face; then turned them away,
+and shook her head mute and credulous.  That man her father! she, did not
+believe it.  Indeed, Jasper took no pains to convince her of the
+relationship or win her attachment.  He was not unkindly rough: he seemed
+wholly indifferent; probably he was so.  For the ruling vice of the man
+was in his egotism.  It was not so much that he had bad principles and
+bad feelings, as that he had no principles and no feelings at all, except
+as they began, continued, and ended in that system of centralization
+which not more paralyzes healthful action in a State than it does in the
+individual man.  Self-indulgence with him was absolute.  He was not
+without power of keen calculation, not without much cunning.  He could
+conceive a project for some gain far off in the future, and concoct, for
+its realization, schemes subtly woven, astutely guarded.  But he could
+not secure their success by any long-sustained sacrifices of the caprice
+of one hour or the indolence of the next.  If it had been a great object
+to him for life to win Sophy's filial affection, he would not have bored
+himself for five minutes each day to gain that object.  Besides, he had
+just enough of shame to render him uneasy at the sight of the child he
+had deliberately sold.  So after chucking her under the chin, and telling
+her to be a good girl and be grateful for all that Mrs. Crane had done
+for her and meant still to do, he consigned her almost solely to that
+lady's care.
+
+When Rugge arrived, and Sophy was informed of her intended destination,
+she broke silence,--her colour went and came quickly,--she declared,
+folding her arms upon her breast, that she would never act if separated
+from her grandfather.  Mrs. Crane, struck by her manner, suggested to
+Rugge that it might be as well, now that she was legally secured to the
+manager, to humour her wish and re-engage Waife.  Whatever the tale with
+which, in order to obtain Sophy from the Mayor, she had turned that
+worthy magistrate's mind against the Comedian, she had not gratified
+Mr. Rugge by a similar confidence to him.  To him she said nothing which
+might operate against renewing engagements with Waife, if he were so
+disposed.  But Rugge had no faith in a child's firmness, and he had a
+strong spite against Waife, so he obstinately refused.  He insisted,
+however, as a peremptory condition of the bargain, that Mr. Losely and
+Mrs. Crane should accompany him to the town to which he had transferred
+his troupe, both in order by their presence to confirm his authority over
+Sophy, and to sanction his claim to her, should Waife reappear and
+dispute it.  For Rugge's profession being scarcely legitimate and
+decidedly equivocal, his right to bring up a female child to the same
+calling might be called into question before a magistrate, and
+necessitate the production of her father in order to substantiate the
+special contract.  In return, the manager handsomely offered to Mr.
+Losely and Mrs. Crane to pay their expenses in the excursion,--a
+liberality haughtily rejected by Mrs. Crane for herself, though she
+agreed at her own charge to accompany Losely if he decided on complying
+with the manager's request.  Losely at first raised objections, but
+hearing that there would be races in the neighbourhood, and having a
+peculiar passion for betting and all kinds of gambling, as well as an
+ardent desire to enjoy his L100 in so fashionable a manner, he consented
+to delay his return to the Continent, and attend Arabella Crane to the
+provincial Elis.  Rugge, carried off Sophy to her fellow "orphans."
+
+AND SOPHY WOULD NOT ACT!
+
+In vain she was coaxed; in vain she was threatened; in vain she was
+deprived of food; in vain shut up in a dark hole; in vain was the lash
+held over her.  Rugge, tyrant though he was, did not suffer the lash to
+fall.  His self-restraint there might be humanity,--might be fear of the
+consequences; for the state of her health began to alarm him.  She might
+die; there might be an inquest.  He wished now that he had taken Mrs.
+Crane's suggestion, and re-engaged Waife.  But where was Waife?
+Meanwhile he had advertised the young Phenomenon; placarded the walls
+with the name of Juliet Araminta; got up the piece of the Remorseless
+Baron, with a new rock-scene.  Waife had had nothing to say in that
+drama, so any one could act his part.
+
+The first performance was announced for that night: there would be such
+an audience! the best seats even now pre-engaged; first night of the
+race-week.  The clock had struck seven; the performance began at eight.
+
+AND SOPHY WOULD NOT ACT!
+
+The child was seated in a space that served for the greenroom, behind the
+scenes.  The whole company had been convened to persuade or shame her out
+of her obstinacy.  The king's lieutenant, the seductive personage of the
+troupe, was on one knee to her, like a lover.  He was accustomed to
+lovers' parts, both on the stage and off it.  Off it, he had one favoured
+phrase, hackneyed, but effective.  "You are too pretty to be so cruel."
+Thrice he now repeated that phrase, with a simper between each repetition
+that might have melted a heart of stone.  Behind Sophy's chair, and
+sticking calico-flowers into the child's tresses, stood the senior matron
+of the establishment,--not a bad sort of woman,--who kept the dresses,
+nursed the sick, revered Rugge, told fortunes on a pack of cards which
+she always kept in her pocket, and acted occasionally in parts where age
+was no drawback and ugliness desirable,--such as a witch, or duenna, or
+whatever in the dialogue was poetically called "Hag."  Indeed, Hag was
+the name she usually took from Rugge; that which she bore from her
+defunct husband was Gormerick.  This lady, as she braided the garland,
+was also bent on the soothing system, saying, with great sweetness,
+considering that her mouth was full of pins, "Now, deary, now, dovey,
+look at ooself in the glass; we could beat oo, and pinch oo, and stick
+pins into oo, dovey, but we won't.  Dovey will be good, I know;" and a
+great patch of rouge came on the child's pale cheeks.  The clown
+therewith, squatting before her with his hands on his knees, grinned
+lustily, and shrieked out, "My eyes, what a beauty!"
+
+Rugge, meanwhile, one hand thrust in his bosom, contemplated the
+diplomatic efforts of his ministers, and saw, by Sophy's compressed lips
+and unwinking eyes, that their cajoleries were unsuccessful.  He
+approached and hissed into her ear, "Don't madden me! don't! you will
+act, eh?"
+
+"No," said Sophy, suddenly rising; and tearing the wreath from her hair,
+she set her small foot on it with force.  "No, not if you kill me!"
+
+"Gods!" faltered Rugge.  "And the sum I have paid!  I am diddled!  Who
+has gone for Mrs. Crane?"
+
+"Tom," said the clown.
+
+The word was scarcely out of the clown's mouth ere Mrs. Crane herself
+emerged from a side scene, and, putting off her bonnet, laid both hands
+on the child's shoulders, and looked her in the face without speaking.
+The child as firmly returned the gaze.  Give that child a martyr's cause,
+and in that frail body there would have been a martyr's soul.  Arabella
+Crane, not inexperienced in children, recognized a power of will stronger
+than the power of brute force, in that tranquillity of eye, the spark of
+calm light in its tender blue, blue, pure as the sky; light, steadfast as
+the star.
+
+"Leave her to me, all of you," said Mrs. Crane.  "I will take her to your
+private room, Mr. Rugge;" and she led the child away to a sort of recess,
+room it could not be rightly called, fenced round with boxes and crates,
+and containing the manager's desk and two stools.
+
+"Sophy," then said Mrs. Crane, "you say you will not act unless your
+grandfather be with you.  Now, hear me.  You know that I have been always
+stern and hard with you.  I never professed to love you,--nor do I.  But
+you have not found me untruthful.  When I say a thing seriously, as I am
+speaking now, you may believe me.  Act to-night, and I will promise you
+faithfully that I will either bring your grandfather here, or I will
+order it so that you shall be restored to him.  If you refuse, I make no
+threat, but I shall leave this place; and my belief is that you will be
+your grandfather's death."
+
+"His death! his death!  I!"
+
+"By first dying yourself.  Oh, you smile; you think it would be happiness
+to die.  What matter that the old man you profess to care for is broken-
+hearted!  Brat, leave selfishness to boys: you are a girl! suffer!"
+
+"Selfish!" murmured Sophy, "selfish! that was said of me before.
+Selfish! ah, I understand.  No, I ought not to wish to die: what would
+become of him?"  She fell on her knees, and raising both her clasped
+hands, prayed inly, silently, an instant, not more.  She rose.  "If I do
+act, then,--it is a promise: you will keep it.  I shall see him: he shall
+know where I am; we shall meet!"
+
+"A promise,--sacred.  I will keep it.  Oh, girl, how much you will love
+some day! how your heart will ache! and when you are my age, look at that
+heart, then at your glass; perhaps you may be, within and without, like
+me."
+
+Sophy, innocent Sophy, stared, awe-stricken, but uncomprehending; Mrs.
+Crane led her back passive.
+
+"There, she will act.  Put on the wreath.  Trick her out.  Hark ye, Mr.
+Rugge.  This is for one night.  I have made conditions with her: either
+you must take back her grandfather, or--she must return to him."
+
+"And my L100?"
+
+"In the latter case ought to be repaid to you."
+
+"Am I never to have the Royal York Theatre?  Ambition of my life, ma'am.
+Dreamed of it thrice!  Ha! but she will act; and succeed.  But to take
+back the old vagabond,--a bitter pill.  He shall halve it with me!
+Ma'am, I'm your grateful--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Threadbare is the simile which compares the world to a stage.  Schiller,
+less complimentary than Shakspeare, lowers the illustration from a stage
+to a puppet-show.  But ever between realities and shows there is a secret
+communication, an undetected interchange,--sometimes a stern reality in
+the heart of the ostensible actor, a fantastic stage-play in the brain of
+the unnoticed spectator.  The bandit's child on the proscenium is still
+poor little Sophy, in spite of garlands and rouge.  But that honest
+rough-looking fellow to whom, in respect for services to sovereign and
+country, the apprentice yields way, may he not be--the crafty Comedian?
+
+TARAN-TARANTARA! rub-a-dub-dub! play up horn! roll drum! a quarter to
+eight; and the crowd already thick before Rugge's Grand Exhibition,--"
+Remorseless Baron and Bandit's Child!  Young Phenomenon,--Juliet
+Araminta,--Patronized by the Nobility in general, and expecting daily to
+be summoned to perform before the Queen,--/Vivat Regina!/"--Ruba-dub-
+dub!  The company issue from the curtain, range in front of the
+proscenuim.  Splendid dresses.  The Phenomenon!--'t is she!
+
+"My eyes, there's a beauty!" cries the clown.
+
+The days have already grown somewhat shorter; but it is not yet dusk.
+How charmingly pretty she still is, despite that horrid paint; but how
+wasted those poor bare snowy arms!
+
+A most doleful lugubrious dirge mingles with the drum and horn.  A man
+has forced his way close by the stage,--a man with a confounded cracked
+hurdy-gurdy.  Whine! whine!  creaks the hurdy-gurdy.  "Stop that! stop
+that mu-zeek!" cries a delicate apprentice, clapping his hands to his
+ears.  "Pity a poor blind--" answers the man with the hurdygurdy.
+
+"Oh, you are blind, are you?  but we are not deaf.  There's a penny not
+to play.  What black thing have you got there by a string?"
+
+"My dog, sir!"
+
+"Deuced ugly one; not like a dog; more like a bear with horns!"
+
+"I say, master," cries the clown, "here's a blind man come to see the
+Phenomenon!"
+
+The crowd laugh; they make way for the blind man's black dog.  They
+suspect, from the clown's address, that the blind man has something to do
+with the company.
+
+You never saw two uglier specimens of their several species than the
+blind man and his black dog.  He had rough red hair and a red beard, his
+face had a sort of twist that made every feature seem crooked.  His eyes
+were not bandaged, but the lids were closed, and he lifted them up
+piteously as if seeking for light.  He did not seem, however, like a
+common beggar: had rather the appearance of a reduced sailor.  Yes, you
+would have bet ten to one he had been a sailor; not that his dress
+belonged to that noble calling, but his build, the roll of his walk, the
+tie of his cravat, a blue anchor tattooed on that great brown hand:
+certainly a sailor; a British tar!  poor man.
+
+The dog was hideous enough to have been exhibited as a /lusus naturae/;
+evidently very aged,--for its face and ears were gray, the rest of it a
+rusty reddish black; it had immensely long ears, pricked up like horns;
+it was a dog that must have been brought from foreign parts; it might
+have come from Acheron, sire by Cerberus, so portentous, and (if not
+irreverent the epithet) so infernal was its aspect, with that gray face,
+those antlered ears, and its ineffably weird demeanour altogether.  A big
+dog, too, and evidently a strong one.  All prudent folks would have made
+way for a man led by that dog.  Whine creaked the hurdy-gurdy, and bow-
+wow all of a sudden barked the dog.  Sophy stifled a cry, pressed her
+hand to her breast, and such a ray of joy flashed over her face that it
+would have warmed your heart for a month to have seen it.
+
+But do you mean to say, Mr. Author, that that British tar (gallant, no
+doubt, but hideous) is Gentleman Waife, or that Stygian animal the snowy-
+curled Sir Isaac?
+
+Upon my word, when I look at them myself, I, the Historian, am puzzled.
+If it had not been for that bow-bow, I am sure Sophy would not have
+suspected.  Taratarantara!  Walk in, ladies and gentlemen, walk in; the
+performance is about to commence!  Sophy lingers last.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the blind man, who had been talking to the apprentice,
+"yes, sir," said he, loud and emphatically, as if his word had been
+questioned.  "The child was snowed up, but luckily the window of the hut
+was left open: exactly at two o'clock in the morning, that dog came to
+the window, set up a howl, and--"
+
+Soppy could hear no more--led away behind the curtain by the King's
+Lieutenant.  But she had heard enough to stir her heart with an emotion
+that set all the dimples round her lip into undulating play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     A sham carries off a reality.
+
+And she did act, and how charmingly!  with what glee and what gusto!
+Rugge was beside himself with pride and rapture.  He could hardly perform
+his own Baronial part for admiration.  The audience, a far choicer and
+more fastidious one than that in the Surrey village, was amazed,
+enthusiastic.  "I shall live to see my dream come true!  I shall have the
+great York theatre!" said Rugge, as he took off his wig and laid his head
+on his pillow.  "Restore her for the L100!  not for thousands!"
+
+Alas, my sweet Sophy, alas!  Has not the joy that made thee perform so
+well undone thee?  Ah, hadst thou but had the wit to act horribly, and be
+hissed!
+
+"Uprose the sun and uprose Baron Rugge."
+
+Not that ordinarily he was a very early man; but his excitement broke his
+slumbers.  He had taken up his quarters on the ground-floor of a small
+lodging-house close to his exhibition; in the same house lodged his
+senior matron, and Sophy herself.  Mrs. Gormerick, being ordered to watch
+the child and never lose sight of her, slept in the same room with Sophy,
+in the upper story of the house.  The old woman served Rugge for
+housekeeper, made his tea, grilled his chop, and for company's sake
+shared his meals.  Excitement as often sharpens the appetite as takes
+it away.  Rugge had supped on hope, and he felt a craving for a more
+substantial breakfast.  Accordingly, when he had dressed, he thrust his
+head into the passage, and seeing there the maid-of-all-work unbarring
+the street-door, bade her go upstairs and wake the Hag, that is, Mrs.
+Gormerick.  Saying this he extended a key; for he ever took the
+precaution, before retiring to rest, to lock the door of the room to
+which Sophy was consigned on the outside, and guard the key till the next
+morning.
+
+The maid nodded, and ascended the stairs.  Less time than he expected
+passed away before Mrs. Gormerick made her appearance, her gray hair
+streaming under her nightcap, her form indued in a loose wrapper,--her
+very face a tragedy.
+
+"Powers above!  What has happened?"  exclaimed Rugge, prophetically.
+
+"She is gone," sobbed Mrs. Gormerick; and, seeing the lifted arm and
+clenched fist of the manager, prudently fainted away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     Corollaries from the problems suggested in chapters VI. and VII.
+
+Broad daylight, nearly nine o'clock indeed, and Jasper Losely is walking
+back to his inn from the place at which he had dined the evening before.
+He has spent the night drinking, gambling, and though he looks heated,
+there is no sign of fatigue.  Nature, in wasting on this man many of her
+most glorious elements of happiness, had not forgotten an herculean
+constitution,--always restless and never tired, always drinking and never
+drunk.  Certainly it is some consolation to delicate invalids that it
+seldom happens that the sickly are very wicked.  Criminals are generally
+athletic; constitution and conscience equally tough; large backs to their
+heads; strong suspensorial muscles; digestions that save them from the
+over-fine nerves of the virtuous.  The native animal must be vigorous in
+the human being, when the moral safeguards are daringly overleapt.
+Jasper was not alone, but with an acquaintance he had made at the dinner,
+and whom he invited to his inn to breakfast; they were walking familiarly
+arm-in-arm.  Very unlike the brilliant Losely,--a young man under thirty,
+who seemed to have washed out all the colours of youth in dirty water.
+His eyes dull, their whites yellow; his complexion sodden.  His form was
+thickset and heavy; his features pug, with a cross of the bull-dog.  In
+dress, a specimen of the flash style of sporting man, as exhibited on the
+Turf, or more often perhaps in the Ring; Belcher neckcloth, with an
+immense pin representing a jockey at full gallop; cut-away coat, corduroy
+breeches, and boots with tops of a chalky white.  Yet, withal, not the
+air and walk of a genuine born and bred sporting man, even of the vulgar
+order.  Something about him which reveals the pretender.  A would-be hawk
+with a pigeon's liver,--a would-be sportsman with a Cockney's nurture.
+
+Samuel Adolphus Poole is an orphan of respectable connections.  His
+future expectations chiefly rest on an uncle from whom, as godfather, he
+takes the loathed name of Samuel.  He prefers to sign himself Adolphus;
+he is popularly styled Dolly.  For his present existence he relies
+ostensibly on his salary as an assistant in the house of a London
+tradesman in a fashionable way of business.  Mr. Latham, his employer,
+has made a considerable fortune, less by his shop than by discounting the
+bills of his customers, or of other borrowers whom the loan draws into
+the net of the custom.  Mr. Latham connives at the sporting tastes of
+Dolly Poole.  Dolly has often thus been enabled to pick up useful pieces
+of information as to the names and repute of such denizens of the
+sporting world as might apply to Mr. Latham for temporary accommodation.
+Dolly Poole has many sporting friends; he has also many debts.  He has
+been a dupe, he is now a rogue; but he wants decision of character to put
+into practice many valuable ideas that his experience of dupe and his
+development into rogue suggest to his ambition.  Still, however, now and
+then, wherever a shabby trick can be safely done, he is what he calls
+"lucky."  He has conceived a prodigious admiration for Jasper Losely, one
+cause for which will be explained in the dialogue about to be recorded;
+another cause for which is analogous to that loving submission with which
+some ill-conditioned brute acknowledges a master in the hand that has
+thrashed it.  For at Losely's first appearance at the convivial meeting
+just concluded, being nettled at the imperious airs of superiority which
+that roysterer assumed, mistaking for effeminacy Jasper's elaborate
+dandyism, and not recognizing in the bravo's elegant proportions the
+tiger-like strength of which, in truth, that tiger-like suppleness should
+have warned him, Dolly Poole provoked a quarrel, and being himself a
+stout fellow, nor unaccustomed to athletic exercises, began to spar; the
+next moment he was at the other end of the room full sprawl on the floor;
+and two minutes afterwards, the quarrel made up by conciliating
+banqueters, with every bone in his skin seeming still to rattle, he was
+generously blubbering out that he never bore malice, and shaking hands
+with Jasper Losely as if he had found a benefactor.  But now to the
+dialogue.
+
+JASPER.--"Yes, Poole, my hearty, as you say, that fellow trumping my best
+club lost me the last rubber.  There's no certainty in whist, if one has
+a spoon for a partner."
+
+POOLE.--"No certainty in every rubber, but next to certainty in the long
+run, when a man plays as well as you do, Mr. Losely.  Your winnings to-
+night must have been pretty large, though you had a bad partner almost
+every hand; pretty large, eh?"
+
+JASPER (carelessly).--"Nothing to talk of,--a few ponies!"
+
+POOLE.--"More than a few; I should know."
+
+JASPER.--"Why?  You did not play after the first rubber."
+
+POOLE.--"No, when I saw your play on that first rubber, I cut out, and
+bet on you; and very grateful to you I am.  Still you would win more with
+a partner who understood your game."
+
+The shrewd Dolly paused a moment, and leaning significantly on Jasper's
+arm, added, in a half whisper, "I do; it is a French one."
+
+Jasper did not change colour, but a quick rise of the eyebrow, and a
+slight jerk of the neck, betrayed some little surprise or uneasiness:
+however, he rejoined without hesitation, "French, ay!  In France there is
+more dash in playing out trumps than there is with English players."
+
+"And with a player like you," said Poole, still in a half whisper, "more
+trumps to play out."
+
+Jasper turned round sharp and short; the hard, cruel expression of his
+mouth, little seen of late, came back to it.  Poole recoiled, and his
+bones began again to ache.  "I did not mean to offend you, Mr. Losely,
+but to caution."
+
+"Caution!"
+
+"There were two knowing coves, who, if they had not been so drunk, would
+not have lost their money without a row, and they would have seen how
+they lost it; they are sharpers: you served them right; don't be angry
+with me.  You want a partner; so do I: you play better than I do, but I
+play well; you shall have two-thirds of our winnings, and when you come
+to town I'll introduce you to a pleasant set of young fellows--green."
+
+Jasper mused a moment.  "You know a thing or two, I see, Master Poole,
+and we'll discuss the whole subject after breakfast.  Ar'n't you hungry?
+No! I am!  Hillo! who 's that?"
+
+His arm was seized by Mr. Rugge.  "She's gone,--fled," gasped the
+manager, breathless.  "Out of the lattice; fifteen feet high; not dashed
+to pieces; vanished."
+
+"Go on and order breakfast," said Losely to Mr. Poole, who was listening
+too inquisitively.  He drew the manager away.  "Can't you keep your
+tongue in your head before strangers?  The girl is gone?"
+
+"Out of the lattice, and fifteen feet high!"
+
+"Any sheets left hanging out of the lattice?"
+
+"Sheets!  No."
+
+"'Then she did not go without help: somebody must have thrown up to her a
+rope-ladder; nothing so easy; done it myself scores of times for the
+descent of 'maids who love the moon,' Mr. Rugge.  But at her age there is
+not a moon; at least there is not a man in the moon: one must dismiss,
+then, the idea of a rope-ladder,--too precocious.  But are you quite
+sure she is gone? not hiding in some cupboard?  Sacre! very odd.  Have
+you seen Mrs. Crane about it?"
+
+"Yes, just come from her; she thinks that villain Waife must have stolen
+her.  But I want you, sir, to come with me to a magistrate."
+
+"Magistrate!  I! why? nonsense; set the police to work."
+
+"Your deposition that she is your lawful child, lawfully made over to me,
+is necessary for the inquisition; I mean police."
+
+"Hang it, what a bother!  I hate magistrates, and all belonging to them.
+Well, I must breakfast!  I'll see to it afterwards.  Oblige me by not
+calling Mr. Waife a villain; good old fellow in his way."
+
+"Good!  Powers above!"
+
+"But if he took her off, how did he get at her?  It must have been
+preconcerted."
+
+"Ha! true.  But she has not been suffered to speak to a soul not in the
+company, Mrs. Crane excepted."
+
+"Perhaps at the performance last night some signal was given?"
+
+"But if Waife had been there I should have seen him; my troupe would have
+known him: such a remarkable face; one eye too."
+
+"Well, well, do what you think best.  I'll call on you after breakfast;
+let me go now.  Basta!  Basta!"
+
+Losely wrenched himself from the manager, and strode off to the inn;
+then, ere joining Poole, he sought Mrs. Crane.  "This going before a
+magistrate," said Losely, "to depose that I have made over my child to
+that blackguard showman--in this town too, after such luck as I have had
+and where bright prospects are opening on me--is most disagreeable.  And
+supposing, when we have traced Sophy, she should be really with the old
+man; awkward!  In short, my dear friend, my dear Bella," (Losely could be
+very coaxing when it was worth his while) "you just manage this for me.
+I have a fellow in the next room waiting to breakfast: as soon as
+breakfast is over I shall be off to the race-ground, and so shirk that
+ranting old bore; you'll call on him instead, and settle it somehow."
+He was out of the room before she could answer.
+
+Mrs. Crane found it no easy matter to soothe the infuriate manager when
+he heard Losely was gone to amuse himself at the race-course.  Nor did
+she give herself much trouble to pacify Mr. Rugge's anger or assist his
+investigations.  Her interest in the whole affair seemed over.  Left thus
+to his own devices, Rugge, however, began to institute a sharp, and what
+promised to be an effective, investigation.  He ascertained that the
+fugitive certainly had not left by the railway or by any of the public
+conveyances; he sent scoots over all the neighbourhood: he enlisted the
+sympathy of the police, who confidently assured him that they had "a
+network over the three kingdoms."  Rugge's suspicions were directed to
+Waife: he could collect, however, no evidence to confirm them.  No person
+answering to Waife's description had been seen in the town.  Once,
+indeed, Rugge was close on the right scent; for, insisting upon Waife's
+one eye, and his possession of a white dog, he was told by several
+witnesses that a man blind of two eyes, and led by a black dog, had been
+close before the stage, just previous to the performance.  But then the
+clown had spoken to that very man; all the Thespian company had observed
+him; all of them had known Waife familiarly for years; and all deposed
+that any creature more unlike to Waife than the blind man could not be
+turned out of Nature's workshop.  But where was that blind man?  They
+found out the wayside inn in which he had taken a lodging for the night;
+and there it was ascertained that he had paid for his room beforehand,
+stating that he should start for the race-course early in the morning.
+Rugge himself set out to the racecourse to kill two birds with one
+stone,--catch Mr. Losely, examine the blind man himself.
+
+He did catch Mr. Losely, and very nearly caught something else; for that
+gentleman was in a ring of noisy horsemen, mounted on a hired hack, and
+loud as the noisiest.  When Rugge came up to his stirrup, and began his
+harangue, Losely turned his hack round with so sudden an appliance of bit
+and spur, that the animal lashed out, and its heel went within an inch of
+the manager's cheek-bone.  Before Rugge could recover, Losely was in a
+hand-gallop.  But the blind man!  Of course Rugge did not find him?  You
+are mistaken: he did.  The blind man was there, dog and all.  The manager
+spoke to him, and did not know him from Adam.
+
+Nor have you or I, my venerated readers, any right whatsoever to doubt
+whether Mr. Rugge could be so stolidly obtuse.  Granting that blind
+sailor to be the veritable William Waife, William Waife was a man of
+genius, taking pains to appear an ordinary mortal.  And the anecdotes of
+Munden, or of Bamfylde Moore Carew, suffice to tell us how Protean is the
+power of transformation in a man whose genius is mimetic.  But how often
+does it happen to us, venerated readers, not to recognize a man of
+genius, even when he takes no particular pains to escape detection!  A
+man of genius may be for ten years our next-door neighbour; he may dine
+in company with us twice a week; his face may be as familiar to our eyes
+as our armchair; his voice to our ears as the click of our parlour-clock:
+yet we are never more astonished than when all of a sudden, some bright
+day, it is discovered that our next-door neighbour is--a man of genius.
+Did you ever hear tell of the life of a man of genius but what there were
+numerous witnesses who deposed to the fact, that until, perfidious
+dissembler! he flared up and set the Thames on fire they had never seen
+anything in him; an odd creature, perhaps a good creature,--probably a
+poor creature,--but a MAN of GENIUS!  They would as soon have suspected
+him of being the Khann of Tartary!  Nay, candid readers, are there not
+some of you who refuse to the last to recognize the maa of genius, till
+he has paid his penny to Charon, and his passport to immortality has been
+duly examined by the customhouse officers of Styx!  When one half the
+world drag forth that same next-door neighbour, place him on a pedestal,
+and have him cried, "Oyez!  Oyez!  Found a man of genius!  Public
+property! open to inspection!" does not the other half the world put on
+its spectacles, turn up its nose, and cry, "That a man of genius, indeed!
+Pelt him!--pelt him!"  Then of course there is a clatter, what the vulgar
+call "a shindy," round the pedestal.  Squeezed by his believers, shied at
+by his scoffers, the poor man gets horribly mauled about, and drops from
+the perch in the midst of the row.  Then they shovel him over, clap a
+great stone on his relics, wipe their foreheads, shake hands, compromise
+the dispute, the one half the world admitting that though he was a genius
+he was still an ordinary man; the other half allowing that though he was
+an ordinary man he was still a genius.  And so on to the next pedestal
+with its "Hic stet," and the next great stone with its "Hic jacet."
+
+The manager of the Grand Theatrical Exhibition gazed on the blind sailor,
+and did not know him from Adam!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     The aboriginal man-eater, or pocket-cannibal, is susceptible of the
+     refining influences of Civilization.  He decorates his lair with the
+     skins of his victims; he adorns his person with the spoils of those
+     whom he devours.  Mr. Losely, introduced to Mr. Poole's friends,
+     dresses for dinner; and, combining elegance with appetite, eats them
+     up.
+
+Elated with the success which had rewarded his talents for pecuniary
+speculation, and dismissing from his mind all thoughts of the fugitive
+Sophy and the spoliated Rugge, Jasper Losely returned to London in
+company with his new friend, Mr. Poole.  He left Arabella Crane to
+perform the same journey unattended; but that grim lady, carefully
+concealing any resentment at such want of gallantry, felt assured that
+she should not be long in London without being honoured by his visits.
+
+In renewing their old acquaintance, Mrs. Crane had contrived to establish
+over Jasper that kind of influence which a vain man, full of schemes that
+are not to be told to all the world, but which it is convenient to
+discuss with some confidential friend who admires himself too highly not
+to respect his secrets, mechanically yields to a woman whose wits are
+superior to his own.
+
+It is true that Jasper, on his return to the metropolis, was not
+magnetically attracted towards Podden Place; nay, days and even weeks
+elapsed, and Mrs. Crane was not gladdened by his presence.  But she knew
+that her influence was only suspended,--not extinct.  The body attracted
+was for the moment kept from the body attracting by the abnormal weights
+that had dropped into its pockets.  Restore the body thus temporarily
+counterpoised to its former lightness, and it would turn to Podden Place
+as the needle to the Pole.  Meanwhile, oblivious of all such natural
+laws, the disloyal Jasper had fixed himself as far from the reach of the
+magnet as from Bloomsbury's remotest verge in St. James's animated
+centre.  The apartment he engaged was showy and commodious.  He added
+largely to his wardrobe, his dressing-case, his trinket box.  Nor, be it
+here observed, was Mr. Losely one of those beauish brigands who wear
+tawdry scarves over soiled linen, and paste rings upon unwashed digitals.
+To do him justice, the man, so stony-hearted to others, loved and
+cherished his own person with exquisite tenderness, lavished upon it
+delicate attentions, and gave to it the very best he could afford.  He
+was no coarse debauchee, smelling of bad cigars and ardent spirits.
+Cigars, indeed, were not among his vices (at worst the rare peccadillo of
+a cigarette): spirit-drinking was; but the monster's digestion was still
+so strong that he could have drunk out a gin-palace, and you would only
+have sniffed the jasmine or heliotrope on the dainty cambric that wiped
+the last drop from his lips.  Had his soul been a tenth part as clean as
+the form that belied it, Jasper Losely had been a saint!  His apartments
+secured, his appearance thus revised and embellished, Jasper's next care
+was an equipage in keeping; he hired a smart cabriolet with a high-
+stepping horse, and, to go behind it, a groom whose size had been stunted
+in infancy by provident parents designing him to earn his bread in the
+stables as a light-weight, and therefore mingling his mother's milk with
+heavy liquors.  In short, Jasper Losely set up to be a buck about town:
+in that capacity Dolly Poole introduced him to several young gentlemen
+who combined commercial vocations with sporting tastes; they could not
+but participate in Poole's admiring and somewhat envious respect for
+Jasper Losely.  There was indeed about the vigorous miscreant a great
+deal of false brilliancy.  Deteriorated from earlier youth though the
+beauty of his countenance might be, it was still undeniably handsome; and
+as force of muscle is beauty in itself in the eyes of young sporting men,
+so Jasper dazzled many a /gracilis puer/, who had the ambition to become
+an athlete, with the rare personal strength which, as if in the
+exuberance of animal spirits, he would sometimes condescend to display,
+by feats that astonished the curious and frightened the timid,--such as
+bending a poker or horseshoe between hands elegantly white, nor unadorned
+with rings,--or lifting the weight of Samuel Dolly by the waistband, and
+holding him at arm's length, with a playful bet of ten to one that he
+could stand by the fireplace and pitch the said Samuel Dolly out of the
+open window.  To know so strong a man, so fine an animal, was something
+to boast of.  Then, too, if Jasper had a false brilliancy, he had also a
+false bonhommie: it was true that he was somewhat imperious, swaggering,
+bullying; but he was also off-hand and jocund; and as you knew him, that
+sidelong look, that defying gait (look and gait of the man whom the world
+cuts), wore away.  In fact, he had got into a world which did not cut
+him, and his exterior was improved by the atmosphere.
+
+Mr. Losely professed to dislike general society.  Drawing rooms were
+insipid; clubs full of old fogies.  "I am for life, my boys," said Mr.
+Losely,
+
+             "'Can sorrow from the goblet flow,
+               Or pain from Beauty's eye?'"
+
+Mr. Losely, therefore, his hat on one side, lounged into the saloons of
+theatres, accompanied by a cohort of juvenile admirers, their hats on one
+side also, and returned to the pleasantest little suppers in his own
+apartment.  There "the goblet" flowed; and after the goblet, cigars for
+some, and a rubber for all.
+
+So puissant Losely's vitality, and so blest by the stars his luck, that
+his form seemed to wax stronger and his purse fuller by this "life."  No
+wonder he was all for a life of that kind; but the slight beings who
+tried to keep up with him grew thinner and thinner, and poorer and
+poorer; a few weeks made their cheeks spectral and their pockets a dismal
+void.  Then as some dropped off from sheer inanition, others whom they
+had decoyed by their praises of "Life" and its hero came into the magic
+circle to fade and vanish in their turn.
+
+In a space of time incredibly brief, not a whist-player was left upon the
+field: the victorious Losely had trumped out the last; some few whom
+Nature had endowed more liberally than Fortune still retained strength
+enough to sup--if asked;
+
+"But none who came to sup remained to play."
+
+"Plague on it," said Losely to Poole, as one afternoon they were dividing
+the final spoils, "your friends are mightily soon cleaned out: could not
+even get up double dummy last night; and we must hit on some new plan for
+replenishing the coffers.  You have rich relations; can't I help you to
+make them more useful?"
+
+Said Dolly Poole, who was looking exceedingly bilious, and had become a
+martyr to chronic headache,
+
+"My relations are prigs!  Some of them give me the cold shoulder, others
+--a great deal of jaw.  But as for tin, I might as well scrape a flint
+for it.  My uncle Sam is more anxious about my sins than the other
+codgers, because he is my godfather, and responsible for my sins, I
+suppose; and he says he will put me in the way of being respectable.
+My head's splitting--"
+
+"Wood does split till it is seasoned," answered Losely.  "Good fellow,
+uncle Sam!  He'll put you in the way of tin; nothing else makes a man
+respectable."
+
+"Yes,--so he says; a girl with money--"
+
+"A wife,--tin canister!  Introduce me to her, and she shall be tied to
+you."
+
+Samuel Dolly did not appear to relish the idea of such an introduction.
+"I have not been introduced to her myself," said he.  "But if you advise
+me to be spliced, why don't you get spliced yourself? a handsome fellow
+like you can be at no loss for an heiress."
+
+"Heiresses are the most horrid cheats in the world," said Losely: "there
+is always some father, or uncle, or fusty Lord Chancellor whose consent
+is essential, and not to be had.  Heiresses in scores have been over head
+and ears in love with me.  Before I left Paris, I sold their locks of
+hair to a wig maker,--three great trunksful.  Honour bright.  But there
+were only two whom I could have safely allowed to run away with me; and
+they were so closely watched, poor things, that I was forced to leave
+them to their fate,--early graves!  Don't talk to me of heiresses, Dolly;
+I have been the victim of heiresses.  But a rich widow is an estimable
+creature.  Against widows, if rich, I have not a word to say; and to tell
+you the truth, there is a widow whom I suspect I have fascinated, and
+whose connection I have a particular private reason for deeming
+desirable!  She has a whelp of a son, who is a spoke in my wheel: were I
+his father-in-law, would not I be a spoke in his?  I'd teach the boy
+'life,' Dolly."  Here all trace of beauty vanished from Jasper's face,
+and Poole, staring at him, pushed away his chair.  "But," continued
+Losely, regaining his more usual expression of levity and boldness, "but
+I am not yet quite sure what the widow has, besides her son, in her own
+possession; we shall see.  Meanwhile, is there--no chance of a rubber
+to-night?"
+
+"None; unless you will let Brown and Smith play upon tick."
+
+"Pooh!  but there's Robinson, he has an aunt he can borrow from?"
+
+"Robinson! spitting blood, with an attack of delirium tremens!  You have
+done for him."
+
+"'Can sorrow from the goblet flow?"' said Losely.  "Well, I suppose it
+can--when a man has no coats to his stomach; but you and I, Dolly Poole,
+have stomachs thick as peajackets, and proof as gutta-percha."
+
+Poole forced a ghastly smile, while Losely, gayly springing up, swept his
+share of booty into his pockets, slapped his comrade on the back, and
+said, "Then, if the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to
+the mountain!  Hang whist, and up with rouge-et-noir!  I have an
+infallible method of winning; only it requires capital.  You will club
+your cash with mine, and I 'll play for both.  Sup here to night, and
+we'll go to the  Hell afterwards."
+
+Samuel Dolly had the most perfect confidence in his friend's science in
+the art of gambling, and he did not, therefore, dissent from the proposal
+made.  Jasper gave a fresh touch to his toilet, and stepped into his
+cabriolet.  Poole cast on him a look of envy, and crawled to his
+lodging,--too ill for his desk, and with a strong desire to take to his
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+                   "Is there a heart that never loved,
+                    Nor felt soft woman's sigh?"
+
+     If there be such a heart, it is not in the breast of a pocket-
+     cannibal.  Your true man-eater is usually of an amorous temperament:
+     he can be indeed sufficiently fond of a lady to eat her up.  Mr.
+     Losely makes the acquaintance of a widow.  For further particulars
+     inquire within.
+
+The dignified serenity of Gloucester Place, Portman Square, is agitated
+by the intrusion of a new inhabitant.  A house in that favoured locality,
+which had for several months maintained "the solemn stillness and the
+dread repose" which appertain to dwellings that are to be let upon lease,
+unfurnished, suddenly started into that exuberant and aggressive life
+which irritates the nerves of its peaceful neighbours.  The bills have
+been removed from the windows; the walls have been cleaned down and
+pointed; the street-door repainted a lively green; workmen have gone in
+and out.  The observant ladies (single ones) in the house opposite,
+discover, by the help of a telescope, that the drawing-rooms have been
+new papered, canary-coloured ground, festoon borders; and that the
+mouldings of the shutters have been gilded.  Gilt shutters! that looks
+ominous of an ostentatious and party-giving tenant.  Then carts full of
+furniture have stopped at the door; carpets, tables, chairs, beds,
+wardrobes,--all seemingly new, and in no inelegant taste,--have been
+disgorged into the hall.  It has been noticed, too, that every day a lady
+of slight figure and genteel habiliments has come, seemingly to inspect
+progress; evidently the new tenant.  Sometimes she comes alone; sometimes
+with a dark-eyed, handsome lad, probably her son.  Who can she be? what
+is she? what is her name? her history? has she a right to settle in
+Gloucester Place, Portman Square?  The detective police of London is not
+peculiarly vigilant; but its defects are supplied by the voluntary
+efforts of unmarried ladies.  The new comer was a widow; her husband had
+been in the army; of good family; but a /mauvais sujet/; she had been
+left in straitened circumstances with an only son.  It was supposed that
+she had unexpectedly come into a fortune, on the strength of which she
+had removed from Pimlico into Gloucester Place.  At length, the
+preparations completed, one Monday afternoon the widow, accompanied by
+her son, came to settle.  The next day a footman, in genteel livery
+(brown and orange), appeared at the door.  Then, for the rest of the
+week, the baker and butcher called regularly.  On the following Sunday,
+the lady and her son appeared at church.
+
+No reader will be at a loss to discover in the new tenant of No. --
+Gloucester Place the widowed mother of Lionel Haughton.  The letter for
+that lady which Darrell had entrusted to his young cousin had, in
+complimentary and cordial language, claimed the right to provide for her
+comfortable and honourable subsistence; and announced that henceforth
+L800 a year would be placed quarterly to her account at Mr. Darrell's
+banker, and that an additional sum of L1200 was already there deposited
+in her name, in order to enable her to furnish any residence to which she
+might be inclined to remove.  Mrs. Haughton therewith had removed to
+Gloucester Place.
+
+She is seated by the window in her front drawing-room, surveying with
+proud though grateful heart the elegances by which she is surrounded.
+A very winning countenance: lively eyes, that in themselves may be over-
+quick and petulant; but their expression is chastened by a gentle kindly
+mouth.  And over the whole face, the attitude, the air, even the dress
+itself, is diffused the unmistakable simplicity of a sincere natural
+character.  No doubt Mrs. Haughton has her tempers and her vanities, and
+her little harmless feminine weaknesses; but you could not help feeling
+in her presence that you were with an affectionate, warm-hearted, honest,
+good woman.  She might not have the refinements of tone and manner which
+stamp the high-bred gentlewoman of convention; she might evince the
+deficiencies of an imperfect third-rate education: but she was saved from
+vulgarity by a certain undefinable grace or person and music of voice,--
+even when she said or did things that well-bred people do not say or do;
+and there was an engaging intelligence in those quick hazel eyes that
+made you sure that she was sensible, even when she uttered what was
+silly.
+
+Mrs. Haughton turned from the interior of the room to the open window.
+She is on the look-out for her son, who has gone to call on Colonel
+Morley, and who ought to be returned by this time.  She begins to get a
+little fidgety, somewhat cross.  While thus standing and thus watchful,
+there comes thundering down the street a high-stepping horse, bay, with
+white legs; it whirls on a cabriolet,--blue, with vermilion wheels; two
+hands, in yellow kid gloves, are just seen under the hood.  Mrs. Haughton
+suddenly blushes and draws in her head.  Too late! the cabriolet has
+stopped; a gentleman leans forward, takes off his hat, bows respectfully.
+"Dear, dear!" murmurs Mrs. Haughton, "I do think he is going to call:
+some people are born to be tempted; my temptations have been immense!  He
+is getting out; he knocks; I can't say, now, that I am not at home,--very
+awkward!  I wish Lionel were here!  What does he mean, neglecting his own
+mother, and leaving her a prey to tempters?"
+
+While the footman is responding to the smart knock of the visitor,
+we will explain how Mrs. Haughton had incurred that gentleman's
+acquaintance.  In one of her walks to her new house while it was in
+the hands of the decorators, her mind being much absorbed in the
+consideration whether her drawing-room curtains should be chintz or
+tabouret,--just as she was crossing the street, she was all but run over
+by a gentleman's cabriolet.  The horse was hard-mouthed, going at full
+speed.  The driver pulled up just in time; but the wheel grazed her
+dress, and though she ran back instinctively, yet when she was safe on
+the pavement, the fright overpowered her nerves, and she clung to the
+street-post almost fainting.  Two or three passers-by humanely gathered
+round her; and the driver, looking back, and muttering to himself, "Not
+bad-looking; neatly dressed; lady-like; French shawl; may have tin; worth
+while perhaps!" gallantly descended and hastened to offer apologies, with
+a respectful hope that she was not injured.
+
+Mrs. Haughton answered somewhat tartly, but being one of those good-
+hearted women who, apt to be rude, are extremely sorry for it the moment
+afterwards, she wished to repair any hurt to his feelings occasioned by
+her first impulse; and when, renewing his excuses, he offered his arm
+over the crossing, she did not like to refuse.  On gaining the side of
+the way on which her house was situated, she had recovered sufficiently
+to blush for having accepted such familiar assistance from a perfect
+stranger, and somewhat to falter in returning thanks for his politeness.
+
+Our gentleman, whose estimate of his attractions was not humble, ascribed
+the blushing cheek and faltering voice to the natural effect produced by
+his appearance; and he himself admiring very much a handsome bracelet on
+her wrist, which he deemed a favourable prognostic of "tin," watched her
+to her door, and sent his groom in the course of the evening to make
+discreet inquiries in the neighbourhood.  The result of the inquiries
+induced him to resolve upon prosecuting the acquaintance thus begun.  He
+contrived to learn the hours at which Mrs. Haughton usually visited the
+house, and to pass by Gloucester Place at the very nick of time.  His bow
+was recognizing, respectful, interrogative,--a bow that asked "How much
+farther?"  But Mrs. Haughton's bow respondent seemed to declare, "Not at
+all!"  The stranger did not venture more that day; but a day or two
+afterwards he came again into Gloucester Place on foot.  On that occasion
+Mrs. Haughton was with her son, and the gentleman would not seem to
+perceive her.  The next day he returned; she was then alone, and just as
+she gained her door, he advanced.  "I beg you ten thousand pardons,
+madam; but if I am rightly informed, I have the honour to address Mrs.
+Charles Haughton!"
+
+The lady bowed in surprise.
+
+"Ah, madam, your lamented husband was one of my most particular friends."
+
+"You don't say so!"  cried Mrs. Haughton.  And looking more attentively
+at the stranger, there was in his dress and appearance something that she
+thought very stylish; a particular friend of Charles Haughton's was sure
+to be stylish, to be a man of the first water.  And she loved the poor
+Captain's memory; her heart warmed to any "particular friend of his."
+
+"Yes," resumed the gentleman, noting the advantage he had gained, "though
+I was considerably his junior, we were great cronies; excuse that
+familiar expression; in the Hussars together--"
+
+"The Captain was not in the Hussars, sir; he was in the Guards."
+
+"Of course he was; but I was saying--in the Hussars, together with the
+Guards, there were some very fine fellows; very fine; he was one of them.
+I could not resist paying my respects to the widowed lady of so fine a
+fellow.  I know it is a liberty, ma'am, but 't is my way.  People who
+know me well--and I have a large acquaintance--are kind enough to excuse
+my way.  And to think that villanous horse, which I had just bought out
+of Lord Bolton's stud (200 guineas, ma'am, and cheap), should have nearly
+taken the life of Charles Haughton's lovely relict!  If anybody else had
+been driving that brute, I shudder to think what might have been the
+consequences; but I have a wrist of iron.  Strength is a vulgar
+qualification,--very vulgar; but when it saves a lady from perishing, how
+can one be ashamed of it?  But I am detaining you.  Your own house, Mrs.
+Haughton?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I have just taken it, but the workmen have not finished.  I am
+not yet settled here."
+
+"Charming situation!  My friend left a son, I believe?  In the army
+already?"
+
+"No, sir, but he wishes it very much."
+
+"Mr. Darrell, I think, could gratify that wish."
+
+"What! you know Mr. Darrell, that most excellent generous man.  All we
+have we owe to him."
+
+The gentleman abruptly turned aside,--wisely; for his expression of face
+at that praise might have startled Mrs.
+
+Haughton.  "Yes, I knew him once.  He has had many a fee out of my
+family.  Goodish lawyer; cleverish man; and rich as a Jew.  I should like
+to see my old friend's son, ma'am.  He must be monstrous handsome with
+such parents!"
+
+"Oh, sir, very like his father.  I shall be proud to present him to you."
+
+"Ma'am, I thank you.  I will have the honour to call--"
+
+And thus is explained how Jasper Losely has knocked at Mrs. Haughton's
+door; has walked up her stairs; has seated himself in her drawing-room,
+and is now edging his chair somewhat nearer to her, and throwing into his
+voice and looks a degree of admiration which has been sincerely kindled
+by the aspect of her elegant apartments.
+
+Jessica Haughton was not one of those women, if such there be, who do not
+know when a gentleman is making up to them.  She knew perfectly well that
+with a very little encouragement her visitor would declare himself a
+suitor.  Nor, to speak truth, was she quite insensible to his handsome
+person, nor quite unmoved by his flatteries.  She had her weak points,
+and vanity was one of them.  Nor conceived she, poor lady, the slightest
+suspicion that Jasper Losely was not a personage whose attentions might
+flatter any woman.  Though lie had not even announced a name, but,
+pushing aside the footman, had sauntered in with as familiar an ease as
+if he had been a first cousin; though he had not uttered a syllable that
+could define his station, or attest his boasted friendship with the dear
+defunct, still Mrs. Haughton implicitly believed that she was with one of
+those gay chiefs of ton who had glittered round her Charlie in that
+earlier morning of his life, ere he had sold out of the Guards, and
+bought himself out of jail; a lord, or an honourable at least; and she
+was even (I shudder to say) revolving in her mind whether it might not be
+an excellent thing for her dear Lionel if she could prevail on herself to
+procure for him the prop and guidance of a distinguished and brilliant
+father-in-law,--rich, noble, evidently good-natured, sensible,
+attractive.  Oh! but the temptation was growing more and more IMMENSE!
+when suddenly the door opened, and in sprang Lionel crying out, "Mother
+dear, the Colonel has come with me on purpose to--"
+
+He stopped short, staring hard at Jasper Losely.  That gentleman advanced
+a few steps, extending his hand, but came to an abrupt halt on seeing
+Colonel Morley's figure now filling up the doorway.  Not that he feared
+recognition: the Colonel did not know him by sight, but he knew by sight
+the Colonel.  In his own younger day, when lolling over the rails of
+Rotten Row, he had enviously noted the leaders of fashion pass by, and
+Colonel Morley had not escaped his observation.  Colonel Morley, indeed,
+was one of those men who by name and repute are sure to be known to all
+who, like Jasper Losely in his youth, would fain learn something about
+that gaudy, babbling, and remorseless world which, like the sun, either
+vivifies or corrupts, according to the properties of the object on which
+it shines.  Strange to say, it was the mere sight of the real fine
+gentleman that made the mock fine gentleman shrink and collapse.  Though
+Jasper Losely knew himself to be still called a magnificent man,--one of
+royal Nature's Lifeguardsmen; though confident that from top to toe his
+habiliments could defy the criticism of the strictest martinet in polite
+costume, no sooner did that figure, by no means handsome and clad in
+garments innocent of buckram but guilty of wrinkles, appear on the
+threshold than Jasper Losely felt small and shabby, as if he had been
+suddenly reduced to five feet two, and had bought his coat out of an old
+clothesman's bag.
+
+Without appearing even to see Mr. Losely, the Colonel, in his turn, as he
+glided past him towards Mrs. Haughton, had, with what is proverbially
+called the corner of the eye, taken the whole of that impostor's superb
+personnel into calm survey, had read him through and through, and decided
+on these two points without the slightest hesitation,--"a lady-killer and
+a sharper."
+
+Quick as breathing had been the effect thus severally produced on Mrs.
+Haughton's visitors, which it has cost so many words to describe,--so
+quick that the Colonel, without any apparent pause of dialogue, has
+already taken up the sentence Lionel left uncompleted, and says, as he
+bows over Mrs. Haughton's hand, "Come on purpose to claim acquaintance
+with an old friend's widow, a young friend's mother."
+
+MRS. HAUGHTON.--"I am sure, Colonel Morley, I am very much flattered.
+And you, too, knew the poor dear Captain; 't is so pleasant to think that
+his old friends come round us now.  This gentleman, also, was a
+particular friend of dear Charles's."
+
+The Colonel had somewhat small eyes, which moved with habitual slowness.
+He lifted those eyes, let them drop upon Jasper (who still stood in the
+middle of the room, with one hand still half-extended towards Lionel),
+and letting the eyes rest there while he spoke, repeated,
+
+"Particular friend of Charles Haughton,--the only one of his particular
+friends whom I never had the honour to see before."
+
+Jasper, who, whatever his deficiency in other virtues, certainly did not
+lack courage, made a strong effort at self-possession, and without
+replying to the Colonel, whose remark had not been directly addressed to
+himself, said in his most rollicking tone, "Yes, Mrs. Haughton, Charles
+was my particular friend, but," lifting his eyeglass, "but this gentleman
+was," dropping the eyeglass negligently, "not in our set, I suppose."
+Then advancing to Lionel, and seizing his hand, "I must introduce
+myself,--the image of your father, I declare!  I was saying to Mrs.
+Haughton how much I should like to see you; proposing to her, just as you
+came in, that we should go to the play together.  Oh, ma'am, you may
+trust him to me safely.  Young men should see Life!"  Here Jasper tipped
+Lionel one of those knowing winks with which he was accustomed to delight
+and ensnare the young friends of Mr. Poole, and hurried on: "But in an
+innocent way, ma'am, such as mothers would approve.  We'll fix an evening
+for it when I have the honour to call again.  Good morning, Mrs.
+Haughton.  Your hand again, sir (to Lionel).  Ah, we shall be great
+friends, I guess!  You must let me take you out in my cab; teach you to
+handle the ribbons, eh?  'Gad, my old friend Charles was a whip.  Ha!
+Ha!  Goodday, good-day!"
+
+Not a muscle had moved in the Colonel's face during Mr. Losely's jovial
+monologue.  But when Jasper had bowed himself out, Mrs. Haughton,
+courtesying, and ringing the bell for the footman to open the street-
+door, the man of the world (and, as a man of the world, Colonel Morley
+was consummate) again raised those small slow eyes,--this time towards
+her face,--and dropped the words,
+
+"My old friend's particular friend is--not bad looking, Mrs. Haughton!"
+
+"And so lively and pleasant," returned Mrs. Haughton, with a slight rise
+of colour, but no other sign of embarrassment.  "It may be a nice
+acquaintance for Lionel."
+
+"Mother!" cried that ungrateful boy, "you are not speaking seriously?
+I think the man is odious.  If he were not my father's friend, I should
+say he was--"
+
+"What, Lionel?" asked the Colonel, blandly, "was what?"
+
+"Snobbish, sir."
+
+"Lionel, how dare you?"  exclaimed Mrs. Haughton.  "What vulgar words
+boys do pick up at school, Colonel Morley."
+
+"We must be careful that they do not pick up worse than words when they
+leave school, my dear madam.  You will forgive me, but Mr. Darrell has so
+expressly--of course, with your permission--commended this young
+gentleman to my responsible care and guidance; so openly confided to me
+his views and intentions,--that perhaps you would do me the very great
+favour not to force upon him, against his own wishes, the acquaintance of
+--that very good-looking person."
+
+Mrs. Haughton pouted, and kept down her rising temper.  The Colonel began
+to awe her.
+
+"By the by," continued the man of the world, "may I inquire the name of
+my old friend's particular friend?"
+
+"His name? upon my word I really don't know it.  Perhaps he left his
+card; ring the bell, Lionel."
+
+"You don't know his name, yet you know him, ma'am, and would allow your
+son to see LIFE under his auspices!  I beg you ten thousand pardons; but
+even ladies the most cautious, mothers the most watchful, are exposed
+to--"
+
+"Immense temptations,--that is--to--to--"
+
+"I understand perfectly, my dear Mrs. Haughton."
+
+The footman appeared.  "Did that gentleman leave a card?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Did not you ask his name when he entered?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, but he said he would announce himself."  When the footman
+had withdrawn, Mrs. Haughton exclaimed piteously, "I have been to blame,
+Colonel; I see it.  But Lionel will tell you how I came to know the
+gentleman,--the gentleman who nearly ran over me, Lionel, and then spoke
+so kindly about your dear father."
+
+"Oh, that is the person!--I supposed so," cried Lionel, kissing his
+mother, who was inclined to burst into tears.  "I can explain it all now,
+Colonel Morley.  Any one who says a kind word about my father warms my
+mother's heart to him at once; is it not so, Mother dear?"
+
+"And long be it so," said Colonel Morley, with grateful earnestness; "and
+may such be my passport to your confidence, Mrs. Haughton.  Charles was
+my old schoolfellow,--a little boy when I and Darrell were in the sixth
+form; and, pardon me, when I add, that if that gentleman were ever
+Charles Haughton's particular friend, he could scarcely have been a very
+wise one.  For unless his appearance greatly belies his years he must
+have been little more than a boy when Charles Haughton left Lionel
+fatherless."
+
+Here, in the delicacy of tact, seeing that Mrs. Haughton looked ashamed
+of the subject, and seemed aware of her imprudence, the Colonel rose,
+with a request--cheerfully granted--that Lionel might be allowed to come
+to breakfast with him the next morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+     A man of the world, having accepted a troublesome charge, considers
+     "what he will do with it;" and, having promptly decided, is sure,
+     first, that he could not have done better; and, secondly, that much
+     may be said to prove that he could not have done worse.
+
+Reserving to a later occasion anymore detailed description of Colonel
+Morley, it suffices for the present to say that he was a man of a very
+fine understanding as applied to the special world in which he lived.
+Though no one had a more numerous circle of friends, and though with many
+of those friends he was on that footing of familiar intimacy which
+Darrell's active career once, and his rigid seclusion of late, could not
+have established with any idle denizen of that brilliant society in which
+Colonel Morley moved and had his being, yet to Alban Morley's heart (a
+heart not easily reached) no friend was so dear as Guy Darrell.  They had
+entered Eton on the same day, left it the same day, lodged while there in
+the same house; and though of very different characters, formed one of
+those strong, imperishable, brotherly affections which the Fates weave
+into the very woof of existence.
+
+Darrell's recommendation would have secured to any young protege Colonel
+Morley's gracious welcome and invaluable advice.  But, both as Darrell's
+acknowledged kinsman and as Charles Haughton's son, Lionel called forth
+his kindliest sentiments and obtained his most sagacious deliberations.
+He had already seen the boy several times before waiting on Mrs.
+Haughton, deeming it would please her to defer his visit until she could
+receive him in all the glories of Gloucester Place; and he had taken
+Lionel into high favour and deemed him worthy of a conspicuous place in
+the world.  Though Darrell in his letter to Colonel Morley had
+emphatically distinguished the position of Lionel, as a favoured kinsman,
+from that of a presumptive or even a probable heir, yet the rich man had
+also added: "But I wish him to take rank as the representative to the
+Haughtons; and, whatever I may do with the bulk of my fortune, I shall
+insure to him a liberal independence.  The completion of his education,
+the adequate allowance to him, the choice of a profession, are matters in
+which I entreat you to act for yourself, as if you were his guardian.  I
+am leaving England: I may be abroad for years."  Colonel Morley, in
+accepting the responsibilities thus pressed on him, brought to bear upon
+his charge subtle discrimination, as well as conscientious anxiety.
+
+He saw that Lionel's heart was set upon the military profession, and that
+his power of application seemed lukewarm and desultory when not cheered
+and concentred by enthusiasm, and would, therefore, fail him if directed
+to studies which had no immediate reference to the objects of his
+ambition.  The Colonel, accordingly, dismissed the idea of sending him
+for three years to a university.  Alban Morley summed up his theories on
+the collegiate ordeal in these succinct aphorisms: "Nothing so good as a
+university education, nor worse than a university without its education.
+Better throw a youth at once into the wider sphere of a capital--provided
+you there secure to his social life the ordinary checks of good company,
+the restraints imposed by the presence of decorous women, and men of
+grave years and dignified repute--than confine him to the exclusive
+society of youths of his own age, the age of wild spirits and
+unreflecting imitation, unless he cling to the safeguard which is found
+in hard reading, less by the book-knowledge it bestows than by the
+serious and preoccupied mind which it abstracts from the coarser
+temptations."
+
+But Lionel, younger in character than in years, was too boyish as yet to
+be safely consigned to those trials of tact and temper which await the
+neophyte who enters on life through the doors of a mess-room.  His pride
+was too morbid, too much on the alert for offence; his frankness too
+crude, his spirit too untamed by the insensible discipline of social
+commerce.
+
+Quoth the observant man of the world: "Place his honour in his own
+keeping, and he will carry it about with him on full cock, to blow off
+a friend's head or his own before the end of the first month.  Huffy!
+decidedly huffy! and of all causes that disturb regiments, and induce
+courts-martial, the commonest cause is a huffy lad!  Pity! for that
+youngster has in him the right metal,--spirit and talent that should make
+him a first-rate soldier.  It would be time well spent that should join
+professional studies with that degree of polite culture which gives
+dignity and cures hulness.  I must get him out of London, out of England;
+cut him off from his mother's apron-strings, and the particular friends
+of his poor father who prowl unannounced into the widow's drawing-room.
+He shall go to Paris; no better place to learn military theories, and be
+civilized out of huffy dispositions.  No doubt my old friend, the
+chevalier, who has the art strategic at his fingerends, might be induced
+to take him en pension, direct his studies, and keep him out of harm's
+way.  I can secure to him the entree into the circles of the rigid old
+Faubourg St. Germain, where manners are best bred, and household ties
+most respected.  Besides, as I am so often at Paris myself, I shall have
+him under my eye, and a few years there, spent in completing him as man,
+may bring him nearer to that marshal's baton which every recruit should
+have in his eye, than if I started him at once a raw boy, unable to take
+care of himself as an ensign, and unfitted, save by mechanical routine,
+to take care of others, should he live to buy the grade of a colonel."
+
+The plans thus promptly formed Alban Morley briefly explained to Lionel
+when the boy came to breakfast in Curzon Street; requesting him to obtain
+Mrs. Haughton's acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary powers
+with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell.  To Lionel the
+proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed
+his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among
+scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of
+course the perfection of wisdom.  Less readily pleased was poor Mrs.
+Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, backing a
+polite and well-worded letter from the Colonel with his own more artless
+eloquence.  Instantly she flew off on the wing of her "little tempers."
+"What! her only son taken from her; sent to that horrid Continent, just
+when she was so respectably settled!  What was the good of money if she
+was to be parted from her boy!  Mr. Darrell might take the money back
+if he pleased; she would write and tell him so.  Colonel Morley had no
+feeling; and she was shocked to think Lionel was in such unnatural hands.
+She saw very plainly that he no longer cared for her,--a serpent's
+tooth," etc.  But as soon as the burst was over, the sky cleared and Mrs.
+Haughton became penitent and sensible.  Then her grief for Lionel's loss
+was diverted by preparations for his departure.  There was his wardrobe
+to see to; a patent portmanteau to purchase and to fill.  And, all done,
+the last evening mother and son spent together, though painful at the
+moment, it would be happiness for both hereafter to recall!  Their hands
+clasped in each other, her head leaning on his young shoulder, her tears
+kissed so soothingly away, and soft words of kindly motherly counsel,
+sweet promises of filial performances.  Happy, thrice happy, as an after
+remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent
+at the foot of that mystic bridge, which starts from the threshold of
+home,--lost in the dimness of the far-opposing shore!--bridge over which
+goes the boy who will never return but as the man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     The pocket-cannibal baits his woman's trap with love-letters, and a
+     widow allured steals timidly towards it from under the weeds.
+
+Jasper Losely is beginning to be hard up!  The infallible calculation at
+rouge-et-noir has carried off all that capital which had accumulated from
+the savings of the young gentlemen whom Dolly Poole had contributed to
+his exchequer.  Poole himself is beset by duns, and pathetically observes
+"that he has lost three stone in weight, and that he believes the calves
+to his legs are gone to enlarge his liver."
+
+Jasper is compelled to put down his cabriolet, to discharge his groom,
+to retire from his fashionable lodgings; and just when the prospect even
+of a dinner becomes dim, he bethinks himself of Arabella Crane, and
+remembers that she promised him L5, nay L10, which are still due from
+her.  He calls; he is received like the prodigal son.  Nay, to his own
+surprise, he finds Mrs. Crane has made her house much more inviting: the
+drawing-rooms are cleaned up; the addition of a few easy articles of
+furniture gives them quite a comfortable air.  She herself has improved
+in costume, though her favourite colour still remains iron gray.  She
+informs Jasper that she fully expected him; that these preparations are
+in his honour; that she has engaged a very good cook; that she hopes he
+will dine with her when not better engaged; in short, lets him feel
+himself at home in Podden Place.
+
+Jasper at first suspected a sinister design, under civilities that his
+conscience told him were unmerited,--a design to entrap him into that
+matrimonial alliance which he had so ungallantly scouted, and from which
+he still recoiled with an abhorrence which man is not justified in
+feeling for any connubial partner less preternaturally terrific than the
+Witch of Endor or the Bleeding Nun!
+
+But Mrs. Crane quickly and candidly hastened to dispel his ungenerous
+apprehensions.  She had given up, she said, all ideas so preposterous;
+love and wedlock were equally out of her mind.  But ill as he had behaved
+to her, she could not but feel a sincere regard for him,--a deep interest
+in his fate.  He ought still to make a brilliant marriage: did that idea
+not occur to him?  She might help him there with her woman's wit.  "In
+short," said Mrs. Crane, pinching her lips, "In short, Jasper, I feel for
+you as a mother.  Look on me as such!"
+
+The pure and affectionate notion wonderfully tickled and egregiously
+delighted Jasper Losely.  "Look on you as a mother!  I will," said he,
+with emphasis.  "Best of creatures!"  And though in his own mind he had
+not a doubt that she still adored him (not as a mother), he believed it
+was a disinterested, devoted adoration, such as the beautiful brute
+really had inspired more than once in his abominable life.  Accordingly,
+he moved into the neighbourhood of Podden Place, contenting himself with
+a second-floor bedroom in a house recommended to him by Mrs. Crane, and
+taking his meals at his adopted mother's with filial familiarity.  She
+expressed a desire to make Mr. Poole's acquaintance; Jasper hastened to
+present that worthy.  Mrs. Crane invited Samuel Dolly to dine one day, to
+sup the next; she lent him L3 to redeem his dress-coat from pawn, and she
+gave him medicaments for the relief of his headache.
+
+Samuel Dolly venerated her as a most superior woman; envied Jasper
+such a "mother."  Thus easily did Arabella Crane possess herself of the
+existence of Jasper Losely.  Lightly her fingers closed over it,--lightly
+as the fisherman's over the captivated trout.  And whatever her
+generosity, it was not carried to imprudence.  She just gave to Jasper
+enough to bring him within her power; she had no idea of ruining herself
+by larger supplies: she concealed from him the extent of her income
+(which was in chief part derived from house-rents), the amount of her
+savings, even the name of her banker.  And if he carried off to the
+rouge-et-noir table the coins he obtained from her, and came for more,
+Mrs. Crane put on the look of a mother incensed,--mild but awful,--and
+scolded as mothers sometimes can scold.  Jasper Losely began to be
+frightened at Mrs. Crane's scoldings.  And he had not that power over
+her which, though arrogated by a lover, is denied to an adopted son.
+His mind, relieved from the habitual distraction of the gaming-table for
+which the resource was wanting, settled with redoubled ardour on the
+image of Mrs. Haughton.  He had called at her house several times since
+the fatal day on which he had met there Colonel Morley, but Mrs. Haughton
+was never at home.  And as when the answer was given to him by the
+footman, he had more than once, on crossing the street, seen herself
+through the window, it was clear that his acquaintance was not courted.
+Jasper Losely, by habit, was the reverse of a pertinacious and
+troublesome suitor; not, Heaven knows, from want of audacity, but from
+excess of self-love.  Where a Lovelace so superb condescended to make
+overtures, a Clarissa so tasteless as to decline them deserved and
+experienced his contempt.  Besides, steadfast and prolonged pursuit of
+any object, however important and attractive, was alien to the levity and
+fickleness of his temper.  But in this instance he had other motives than
+those on the surface for unusual perseverance.
+
+A man like Jasper Losely never reposes implicit confidence in any one.
+He is garrulous, indiscreet; lets out much that Machiavel would have
+advised him not to disclose: but he invariably has nooks and corners in
+his mind which he keeps to himself.  Jasper did not confide to his
+adopted mother his designs upon his intended bride.  But she knew them
+through Poole, to whom he was more frank; and when she saw him looking
+over her select and severe library, taking therefrom the "Polite Letter-
+Writer" and the "Elegant Extracts," Mrs. Crane divined at once that
+Jasper Losely was meditating the effect of epistolary seduction upon the
+widow of Gloucester Place.
+
+Jasper did not write a bad love-letter in the florid style.  He had at
+his command, in especial, certain poetical quotations, the effect of
+which repeated experience had assured him to be as potent upon the female
+breast as the incantations or carmina of the ancient sorcery.  The
+following in particular,
+
+                   "Had I a heart for falsehood framed,
+                    I neer could injure you."
+
+Another, generally to be applied when confessing that his career had been
+interestingly wild, and would, if pity were denied him, be pathetically
+short,
+
+              "When he who adores thee has left but the name
+               Of his faults and his follies behind."
+
+Armed with these quotations, many a sentence from the "Polite Letter-
+Writer" or the "Elegant Extracts," and a quire of rose-edged paper,
+Losely sat down to Ovidian composition.
+
+But as he approached the close of epistle the first, it occurred to him
+that a signature and address were necessary.  The address was not
+difficult.  He could give Poole's (hence his confidence to that
+gentleman): Poole had a lodging in Bury Street, St. James's, a
+fashionable locality for single men.  But the name required more
+consideration.  There were insuperable objections against signing his own
+to any person who might be in communication with Mr. Darrell; a pity, for
+there was a good old family of the name of Losely.  A name of
+aristocratic sound might indeed be readily borrowed from any lordly
+proprietor thereof without asking a formal consent.  But this loan was
+exposed to danger.  Mrs. Haughton might very naturally mention such name,
+as borne by her husband's friend, to Colonel Morley; and Colonel Morley
+would most probably know enough of the connections and relations of any
+peer so honoured to say, "There is no such Greville, Cavendish, or
+Talbot."  But Jasper Losely was not without fertility of invention and
+readiness of resource.  A grand idea, worthy of a master, and proving
+that, if the man had not been a rogue in grain, he could have been reared
+into a very clever politician, flashed across him.  He would sign himself
+"SMITH."  Nobody could say there is no such Smith; nobody could say that
+a Smith might not be a most respectable, fashionable, highly-connected
+man.  There are Smiths who are millionaires; Smiths who are large-acred
+squires; substantial baronets; peers of England, and pillars of the
+State.  You can no more question a man's right to be a Smith than his
+right to be a Briton; and wide as the diversity of rank, lineage, virtue,
+and genius in Britons is the diversity in Smiths.  But still a name so
+generic often affects a definitive precursor.  Jasper signed himself "J.
+COURTENAY SMITH."  He called, and left epistle the first with his own
+kid-gloved hand, inquiring first if Mrs. Haughton were at home, and,
+responded to in the negative this time, he asked for her son.  "Her son
+was gone abroad with Colonel Morley."  Jasper, though sorry to lose
+present hold over the boy, was consoled at learning that the Colonel was
+off the ground.  Afore sanguine of success, he glanced up at the window,
+and, sure that Mrs. Haughton was there, though he saw her not, lifted his
+hat with as melancholy an expression of reproach as he could throw into
+his face.
+
+The villain could not have found a moment in Mrs. Haughton's widowed life
+so propitious to his chance of success.  In her lodging-house at Pimlico,
+the good lady had been too incessantly occupied for that idle train of
+revery, in which the poets assure us that Cupid finds leisure to whet his
+arrows and take his aim.  Had Lionel still been by her side, had even
+Colonel Morley been in town, her affection for the one, her awe of the
+other, would have been her safeguards.  But alone in that fine new house,
+no friends, no acquaintances as yet, no dear visiting circle on which to
+expend the desire of talk and the zest for innocent excitement that are
+natural to ladies of an active mind and a nervous temperament, the sudden
+obtrusion of a suitor so respectfully ardent,--oh, it is not to be denied
+that the temptation was IMMENSE.
+
+And when that note, so neatly folded, so elegantly sealed, lay in her
+irresolute hand, the widow could not but feel that she was still young,
+still pretty; and her heart flew back to the day when the linendraper's
+fair daughter had been the cynosure of the provincial High Street; when
+young officers had lounged to and fro the pavement, looking in at her
+window; when ogles and notes had alike beset her, and the dark eyes of
+the irresistible Charlie Haughton had first taught her pulse to tremble.
+And in her hand lies the letter of Charlie Haughton's particular friend.
+She breaks the seal.  She reads--a declaration!
+
+Five letters in five days did Jasper write.  In the course of those
+letters, he explains away the causes for suspicion which Colonel Morley
+had so ungenerously suggested.  He is no longer anonymous; he is J.
+Courtenay Smith.  He alludes incidentally to the precocious age in which
+he had become "lord of himself, that heritage of woe."  This accounts for
+his friendship with a man so much his senior as the late Charlie.  He
+confesses that in the vortex of dissipation his hereditary estates have
+disappeared; but he has still a genteel independence; and with the woman
+of his heart, etc.  He had never before known what real love was, etc.
+"Pleasure had fired his maddening soul;" "but the heart,--the heart been
+lonely still."  He entreated only a personal interview, even though to be
+rejected,--scorned.  Still, when "he who adored her had left but the
+name," etc.  Alas! alas! as Mrs. Haughton put down epistle the fifth, she
+hesitated; and the woman who hesitates in such a case, is sure, at least-
+to write a civil answer.
+
+Mrs. Haughton wrote but three lines,--still they were civil; and conceded
+an interview for the next day, though implying that it was but for the
+purpose of assuring Mr. J. Courtenay Smith, in person, of her unalterable
+fidelity to the shade of his lamented friend.
+
+In high glee Jasper showed Mrs. Haughton's answer to Dolly Poole, and
+began seriously to speculate on the probable amount of the widow's
+income, and the value of her movables in Gloucester Place.  Thence he
+repaired to Mrs. Crane; and, emboldened by the hope forever to escape
+from her maternal tutelage, braved her scoldings and asked for a couple
+of sovereigns.  He was sure that he should be in luck that night.  She
+gave to him the sum, and spared the scoldings.  But, as soon as he was
+gone, conjecturing from the bravado of his manner what had really
+occurred, Mrs. Crane put on her bonnet and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+     Unhappy is the man who puts his trust in a woman.
+
+Late that evening a lady, in a black veil, knocked at No. -- Gloucester
+Place, and asked to see Mrs. Haughton on urgent business.  She was
+admitted.  She remained but five minutes.
+
+The next day when, "gay as a bridegroom prancing to his bride," Jasper
+Losely presented himself at the widow's door, the servant placed in his
+hand a packet, and informed him blufly that Mrs. Haughton had gone out of
+town.  Jasper with difficulty suppressed his rage, opened the packet,--
+his own letters returned, with these words, "Sir, your name is not
+Courtenay Smith.  If you trouble me again, I shall apply to the police."
+Never from female hand had Jasper Losely's pride received such a slap on
+its face.  He was literally stunned.  Mechanically he hastened to
+Arabella Crane; and having no longer any object in concealment, but, on
+the contrary, a most urgent craving for sympathy, he poured forth his
+indignation and wrongs.  No mother could be more consolatory than Mrs.
+Crane.  She soothed, she flattered, she gave him an excellent dinner;
+after which, she made him so comfortable, what with an easy-chair and
+complimentary converse, that, when Jasper rose late to return to his
+lodging, he said, "After all, if I had been ugly and stupid, and of a
+weakly constitution, I should have been of a very domestic turn of mind."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+     No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but what
+     he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
+
+Whether moved by that pathetic speech of Jasper's, or by some other
+impulse not less feminine, Arabella Crane seemed suddenly to conceive the
+laudable and arduous design of reforming that portentous sinner.  She had
+some distant relations in London, whom she very rarely troubled with a
+visit, and who, had she wanted anything from them, would have shut their
+doors in her face; but as, on the contrary, she was well off, single, and
+might leave her money to whom she pleased, the distant relations were
+always warm in manner, and prodigal in their offers of service.  The next
+day she repaired to one of these kinsfolk,--a person in a large way of
+business,--and returned home with two great books in white sheepskin.
+And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a
+tender mother can address to an amiable truant, "Jasper, you have great
+abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your
+forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that.  I have been
+fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which you
+will be liberally remunerated.  A friend of mine wishes to submit these
+books to a regular accountant: he suspects that a clerk has cheated him;
+but he cannot tell how or where.  You know accounts thoroughly,--no one
+better,--and the pay will be ten guineas."
+
+Jasper, though his early life had rendered familiar and facile to him the
+science of book-keeping and double-entry, made a grimace at the revolting
+idea of any honest labour, however light and well paid.  But ten guineas
+were an immense temptation, and in the evening Mrs. Crane coaxed him into
+the task.
+
+Neglecting no feminine art to make the lawless nomad feel at home under
+her roof, she had provided for his ease and comfort morocco slippers and
+a superb dressing-robe, in material rich, in colour becoming.  Men,
+single or marital, are accustomed to connect the idea of home with
+dressing-gown and slippers, especially if, after dinner, they apply (as
+Jasper Losely now applied) to occupations in which the brain is active,
+the form in repose.  What achievement, literary or scientific, was ever
+accomplished by a student strapped to unyielding boots, and "cabined,
+cribbed, confined," in a, coat that fits him like wax?  As robed in the
+cozy garment which is consecrated to the sacred familiar Lares, the
+relaxing, handsome ruffian sat in the quiet room, bending his still
+regular profile over the sheepskin books, the harmless pen in that strong
+well-shaped hand, Mrs. Crane watched him with a softening countenance.
+To bear him company, she had actively taken, herself, to work,--the gold
+thimble dragged from its long repose,--marking and hemming, with nimble
+artistic fingers, new cravats for the adopted son!  Strange creature is
+woman!  Ungrateful and perfidious as that sleek tiger before her had
+often proved himself, though no man could less deserve one kindly
+sentiment in a female heart, though she knew that he cared nothing for
+her, still it was pleasing to know that he cared for nobody else, that he
+was sitting in the same room; and Arabella Crane felt that, if that
+existence could continue, she could forget the past and look contented
+towards the future.  Again I say, strange creature is woman; and in this
+instance, creature more strange, because so grim!  But as her eyes
+soften, and her fingers work, and her mind revolves schemes for making
+that lawless wild beast an innocuous tame animal, who can help feeling
+for and with grim Arabella Crane?
+
+Poor woman!  And will not the experiment succeed?  Three evenings does
+Jasper Losely devote to this sinless life and its peaceful occupation.
+He completes his task; he receives the ten guineas.  (How much of that
+fee came out of Mrs. Crane's privy purse?)  He detects three mistakes,
+which justify suspicion of the book-keeper's integrity.  Set a thief to
+catch a thief!  He is praised for acuteness, and promised a still lighter
+employment, to be still better paid.  He departs, declaring that he will
+come the next day, earlier than usual; he volunteers an eulogium upon
+work in general; he vows that evenings so happy he has not spent for
+years; he leaves Mrs. Crane so much impressed by the hope of his
+improvement that, if a good clergyman had found her just at that moment,
+she might almost have been induced to pray.  But
+
+                        "Heu quoties fidem
+                         Mutatosque deos flebit!"
+
+Jasper Losely returns not, neither to Podden place or his lodging in the
+neighborhood. Days elapse and still he comes not; even Poole does not
+know where he has gone; even Poole has not seen him!  But that worthy is
+now laid up with a serious rheumatic fever--confined to his room and a
+water gruel.  And Jasper Losely is not the man to intrude himself on the
+privacy of a sick chamber.  Mrs. Crane, more benevolent, visits
+Poole cheers him up--gets him a nurse--writes to Uncle Sam.  Poole
+blesses her.  He hopes that Uncle Sam, moved by the spectacle of the
+sick-bed will say, "Don't let your debts fret you: I will pay them!"
+Whatever her disappointment or resentment at Jasper's thankless and
+mysterious evasion, Arabella Crane is calmly confident of his return.  To
+her servant, Bridget Greggs, who was perhaps the sole person in the world
+who entertained affection for the lone gaunt woman, and who held Jasper
+Losely in profound detestation, she said, with tranquil sternness, "That
+man has crossed my life, and darkened it.  He passed away, and left Night
+behind him.  He has dared to return.  He shall never escape me again till
+the grave yawn for one of us."
+
+"But, Lor' love you, miss, you would not put yourself in the power of
+such a black-hearted villing?"
+
+"In his power!  No, Bridget; fear not, he must be in mine, sooner or
+later in mine, hand and foot.  Patience!"  As she was thus speaking,--
+a knock at the door!  "It is he; I told you so; quick!"
+
+But it was not Jasper Losely.  It was Mr. Rugge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+     "When God wills, all winds bring rain."--Ancient Proverb.
+
+The manager had not submitted to the loss of his property in Sophy and
+L100 without taking much vain trouble to recover the one or the other.
+He had visited Jasper while that gentleman lodged in St. James's; but the
+moment he hinted at the return of the L100, Mr. Losely opened both door
+and window, and requested the manager to make his immediate choice of the
+two.  Taking the more usual mode of exit, Mr. Rugge vented his just
+indignation in a lawyer's letter, threatening Mr. Losely with an action
+for conspiracy and fraud.  He had also more than once visited Mrs. Crane,
+who somewhat soothed him by allowing that he had been very badly used,
+that he ought at least to be repaid his money, and promising to do her
+best to persuade Mr. Losely "to behave like a gentleman."  With regard to
+Sophy herself, Mrs. Crane appeared to feel a profound indifference.  In
+fact, the hatred which Mrs. Crane had unquestionably conceived for Sophy
+while under her charge was much diminished by Losely's unnatural conduct
+towards the child.  To her it was probably a matter of no interest
+whether Sophy was in Rugge's hands or Waife's; enough for her that the
+daughter of a woman against whose memory her fiercest passions were
+enlisted was, in either case, so far below herself in the grades of the
+social ladder.
+
+Perhaps of the two protectors for Sophy, Rugge and Waife, her spite alone
+would have given the preference to Waife.  He was on a still lower step
+of the ladder than the itinerant manager.  Nor, though she had so
+mortally injured the forlorn cripple in the eyes of Mr. Hartopp, had
+she any deliberate purpose of revenge to gratify against him!  On the
+contrary, if she viewed him with contempt, it was a contempt not unmixed
+with pity.  It was necessary to make to the Mayor the communications she
+had made, or that worthy magistrate would not have surrendered the child
+intrusted to him, at least until Waife's return.  And really it was a
+kindness to the old man to save him both from an agonizing scene with
+Jasper, and from the more public opprobrium which any resistance on his
+part to Jasper's authority or any altercation between the two would
+occasion.  And as her main object then was to secure Losely's allegiance
+to her, by proving her power to be useful to him, so Waifes and Sophys
+and Mayors and Managers were to her but as pawns to be moved and
+sacrificed, according to the leading strategy of her game.
+
+Rugge came now, agitated and breathless, to inform Mrs. Crane that Waife
+had been seen in London.  Mr. Rugge's clown had seen him, not far from
+the Tower; but the cripple had disappeared before the clown, who was on
+the top of an omnibus, had time to descend.  "And even if he had actually
+caught hold of Mr. Waife," observed Mrs. Crane, "what then?  You have no
+claim on Mr. Waife."
+
+"But the Phenomenon must be with that ravishing marauder," said Rugge.
+"However, I have set a minister of justice--that is, ma'am, a detective
+police--at work; and what I now ask of you is simply this: should it be
+necessary for Mr. Losely to appear with me before the senate--that is to
+say, ma'am, a metropolitan police-court--in order to prove my legal
+property in my own bought and paid for Phenomenon, will you induce that
+bold bad man not again to return the poisoned chalice to my lips?"
+
+"I do not even know where Mr. Losely is; perhaps not in London."
+
+"Ma'am, I saw him last night at the theatre,--Princess's.  I was in the
+shilling gallery.  He who owes me L100, ma'am,--he in a private box!"
+
+"Ah! you are sure; by himself?"
+
+"With a lady, ma'am,--a lady in a shawl from Ingee.  I know them shawls.
+My father taught me to know them in early childhood, for he was an
+ornament to British commerce,--a broker, ma'am,--pawn!  And," continued
+Rugge, with a withering smile, "that man in a private box, which at the
+Princess's costs two pounds two, and with the spoils of Ingee by his
+side, lifted his eyeglass and beheld me,--me in the shilling gallery!
+and his conscience did not say, 'Should we not change places if I paid
+that gentleman L100?'  Can such things be, and overcome us, ma'am, like a
+summer cloud, without our special--I put it to you, ma'am--wonder?"
+
+"Oh, with a lady, was he?"  exclaimed Arabella Crane, her wrath, which,
+while the manager spoke, gathered fast and full, bursting now into words.
+"His ladies shall know the man who sells his own child for a show; only
+find out where the girl is, then come here again before you stir further.
+Oh, with a lady!  Go to your detective policeman, or rather send him to
+me; we will first discover Mr. Losely's address.  I will pay all the
+expenses.  Rely on my zeal, Mr. Rugge."
+
+Much comforted, the manager went his way.  He had not been long gone
+before Jasper himself appeared.  The traitor entered with a more than
+customary bravado of manner, as if he apprehended a scolding, and was
+prepared to face it; but Mrs. Crane neither reproached him for his
+prolonged absence, nor expressed surprise at his return.  With true
+feminine duplicity, she received him as if nothing had happened.  Jasper,
+thus relieved, became of his own accord apologetic and explanatory;
+evidently he wanted something of Mrs. Crane.  "The fact is, my dear
+friend," said he, sinking into a chair, "that the day after I last saw
+you I happened to go to the General Post Office to see if there were any
+letters for me.  You smile: you don't believe me.  Honour bright, here
+they are;" and Jasper took from the side pocket of his coat a pocket-
+book, a new pocket-book, a brilliant pocket-book, fragrant Russian
+leather, delicately embossed, golden clasps, silken linings, jewelled
+pencil-case, malachite pen-knife,--an arsenal of knickknacks stored in
+neat recesses; such a pocket-book as no man ever gives to himself.
+Sardanapalus would not have given that pocket-book to himself!  Such a
+pocket-book never comes to you, O enviable Lotharios, save as tributary
+keepsakes from the charmers who adore you!  Grimly the Adopted Mother
+eyed that pocket-book.  Never had she seen it before.  Grimly she pinched
+her lips.  Out of this dainty volume--which would have been of cumbrous
+size to a slim thread-paper exquisite, but scarcely bulged into ripple
+the Atlantic expanse of Jasper Losely's magnificent chest--the monster
+drew forth two letters on French paper,--foreign post-marks.  He replaced
+them quickly, only suffering her eye to glance at the address, and
+continued, "Fancy! that purse-proud Grand Turk of an infidel, though he
+would not believe me, has been to France,--yes, actually to ----- making
+inquiries evidently with reference to Sophy.  The woman who ought to have
+thoroughly converted him took flight, however, and missed seeing him.
+Confound her!"
+
+"I ought to have been there.  So I have no doubt for the present the Pagan
+remains stubborn.  Gone on into Italy I hear; doing me, violating the
+laws of Nature, and roving about the world, with his own solitary hands
+in his bottomless pockets,--like the wandering Jew!  But, as some slight
+set-off in my run of ill-luck, I find at the post-office a pleasanter
+letter than the one which brings me this news.  A rich elderly lady, who
+has no family, wants to adopt a nice child; will take Sophy,--make it
+worth my while to let her have Sophy.  'T is convenient in a thousand
+ways to settle one's child comfortably in a rich house; establishes
+rights, subject, of course, to cheques which would not affront me,--a
+father!  But the first thing requisite is to catch Sophy: 't is in that I
+ask your help; you are so clever.  Best of creatures! what could I do
+without you?  As you say, whenever I want a friend I come to you,--
+Bella!"
+
+Mrs. Crane surveyed Jasper's face deliberately.  It is strange how much
+more readily women read the thoughts of men than men detect those of
+women.  "You know where the child is," said she, slowly.
+
+"Well, I take it for granted she is with the old man; and I have seen
+him,--seen him yesterday."
+
+"Go on; you saw him,--where?"
+
+"Near London Bridge."
+
+"What business could you possibly have in that direction?  Ah! I guess,
+the railway station to Dover: you are going abroad?"
+
+"No such thing; you are so horribly suspicious.  But it is true I had
+been to the station inquiring after some luggage or parcels which a
+friend of mine had ordered to be left there; now, don't interrupt me.
+At the foot of the bridge I caught a sudden glimpse of the old man,--
+changed, altered, aged, one eye lost.  You had said I should not know him
+again, but I did; I should never have recognized his face.  I knew him by
+the build of the shoulder, a certain turn of the arms, I don't know what;
+one knows a man familiar to one from birth without seeing his face.  Oh,
+Bella; I declare that I felt as soft,--as soft as the silliest muff who
+ever--"  Jasper did not complete his comparison, but paused a moment,
+breathing hard, and then broke into another sentence.  "He was selling
+something in a basket,--matches, boot-straps, deuce knows what.  He! a
+clever man too!  I should have liked to drop into that d----d basket all
+the money I had about me."
+
+"Why did not you?"
+
+"Why?  How could I?  He would have recognized me.  There would have been
+a scene,--a row, a flare up, a mob round us, I dare say.  I had no idea
+it would so upset me; to see him selling matches too; glad we did not
+meet at Gatesboro'.  Not even for that L100 do I think I could have faced
+him.  No; as he said when we last parted, 'The world is wide enough for
+both.'  Give me some brandy; thank you."
+
+"You did not speak to the old man; he did not see you: but you wanted to
+get back the child; you felt sure she must be with him; you followed him
+home?"
+
+"I?  No; I should have had to wait for hours.  A man like me, loitering
+about London Bridge!  I should have been too conspicuous; he would have
+soon caught sight of me, though I kept on his blind side.  I employed a
+ragged boy to watch and follow him, and here is the address.  Now, will
+you get Sophy back for me without any trouble to me, without my
+appearing?  I would rather charge a regiment of horse-guards than bully
+that old man."
+
+"Yet you would rob him of the child,--his sole comfort?"
+
+"Bother!"  cried Losely, impatiently; "the child can be only a burden to
+him; well out of his way; 't is for the sake of that child he is selling
+matches!  It would be the greatest charity we could do him to set him
+free from that child sponging on him, dragging him down; without her he'd
+find a way to shift for himself.  Why, he's even cleverer than I am!  And
+there--there; give him this money, but don't say it came from me."
+
+He thrust, without counting, several sovereigns--at least twelve or
+fourteen--into Mrs. Crane's palm; and so powerful a charm has goodness
+the very least, even in natures the most evil, that that unusual,
+eccentric, inconsistent gleam of human pity in Jasper Losely's benighted
+soul shed its relenting influence over the angry, wrathful, and
+vindictive feelings with which Mrs. Crane the moment before regarded the
+perfidious miscreant; and she gazed at him with a sort of melancholy
+wonder.  What! though so little sympathizing with affection that he could
+not comprehend that he was about to rob the old man of a comfort which no
+gold could repay; what though so contemptuously callous to his own
+child,--yet there in her hand lay the unmistakable token that a something
+of humanity, compunction, compassion, still lingered in the breast of the
+greedy cynic; and at that thought all that was softest in her own human
+nature moved towards him, indulgent, gentle.  But in the rapid changes of
+the heart feminine, the very sentiment that touched upon love brought
+back the jealousy that bordered upon hate.  How came he by so much money?
+more than days ago he, the insatiate spendthrift, had received for his
+task-work?  And that POCKETBOOK!
+
+"You have suddenly grown rich, Jasper."
+
+For a moment he looked confused, but replied as he rehelped himself to
+the brandy, "Yes, rouge-et-noir,--luck.  Now, do go and see after this
+affair, that's a dear good woman.  Get the child to-day if you can; I
+will call here in the evening."
+
+"Should you take her, then, abroad at once to this worthy lady who will
+adopt her?  If so, we shall meet, I suppose, no, more; and I am assisting
+you to forget that I live still."
+
+"Abroad,--that crotchet of yours again!  You are quite mistaken; in fact,
+the lady is in London.  It was for her effects that I went to the
+station.  Oh, don't be jealous; quite elderly."
+
+"Jealous, my dear Jasper! you forget.  I am as your mother.  One of your
+letters, then, announced this lady's intended arrival; you were in
+correspondence with this--elderly lady."
+
+"Why, not exactly in correspondence.  But when I left Paris I gave the
+General Post Office as my address to a few friends in France.  And this
+lady, who took an interest in my affairs (ladies, whether old or young,
+who have once known me, always do), was aware that I had expectations
+with respect to the child.  So some days ago, when I was so badly off,
+I wrote a line to tell her that Sophy had been no go, and that, but for a
+dear friend (that is you), I might be on the pave.  In her answer, she
+said she should be in London as soon as I received her letter; and gave
+me an address here at which to learn where to find her when arrived,--
+a good old soul, but strange to London.  I have been very busy, helping
+her to find a house, recommending tradesmen, and so forth.  She likes
+style, and can afford it.  A pleasant house enough, but our quiet
+evenings here spoil me for anything else.  Now get on your bonnet, and
+let me see you off."
+
+"On one condition, my dear Jasper,--that you stay here till I return."
+
+Jasper made a wry face.  But, as it was near dinner-time and he never
+wanted for appetite, he at length agreed to employ the interval of her
+absence in discussing a meal, which experience had told him Mrs. Crane's
+new cook would, not unskilfully, though hastily, prepare.  Mrs. Crane
+left him to order the dinner, and put on her shawl and bonnet.  But,
+gaining her own room, she rang for Bridget Greggs, and when that
+confidential servant appeared, she said, "In the side pocket of Mr.
+Losely's coat there is a POCKET-BOOK; in it there are some letters which
+I must see.  I shall appear to go out; leave the street-door ajar, that I
+may slip in again unobserved.  You will serve dinner as soon as possible.
+And when Mr. Losely, as usual, exchanges his coat for the dressing-gown,
+contrive to take out that pocket-book unobserved by him.  Bring it to me
+here, in this room: you can as easily replace it afterwards.  A moment
+will suffice to my purpose."
+
+Bridget nodded, and understood.  Jasper, standing by the window, saw Mrs.
+Crane leave the house, walking briskly.  He then threw himself on the
+sofa, and began to doze: the doze deepened, and became sleep.  Bridget,
+entering to lay the cloth, so found him.  She approached on tiptoe,
+sniffed the perfume of the pocket-book, saw its gilded corners peep
+forth from its lair.  She hesitated; she trembled; she was in mortal fear
+of that truculent slumberer; but sleep lessens the awe thieves feel or
+heroes inspire.  She has taken the pocketbook; she has fled with the
+booty; she is in Mrs. Crane's apartment not five minutes after Mrs. Crane
+has regained its threshold.
+
+Rapidly the jealous woman ransacked the pocket-book; started to see,
+elegantly worked with gold threads, in the lining, the words, "SOUVIENS
+TOI DE TA GABRIELLE;" no other letters, save the two, of which Jasper had
+vouchsafed to her but the glimpse.  Over these she hurried her glittering
+eyes; and when she restored them to their place, and gave back the book
+to Bridget, who stood by breathless and listening, lest Jasper should
+awake, her face was colourless, and a kind of shudder seemed to come over
+her.  Left alone, she rested her face on, her hand, her lips moving as if
+in self-commune.  Then noiselessly she glided down the stairs, regained
+the street, and hurried fast upon her way.
+
+Bridget was not in time to restore the book to Jasper's pocket, for when
+she re-entered he was turning round and stretching himself between sleep
+and waking.  But she dropped the book skilfully on the floor, close
+beside the sofa: it would seem to him, on waking, to have fallen out of
+the pocket in the natural movements of sleep.
+
+And, in fact, when he rose, dinner now on the table, he picked up the
+pocket-book without suspicion.  But it was lucky that Bridget had not
+waited for the opportunity suggested by her mistress.  For when Jasper
+put on the dressing-gown, he observed that his coat wanted brushing; and,
+in giving it to the servant for that purpose, he used the precaution of
+taking out the pocket-book, and placing it in some other receptacle of
+his dress.
+
+Mrs. Crane returned in less than two hours,--returned with a disappointed
+look, which at once prepared Jasper for the intelligence that the birds
+to be entrapped had flown.
+
+"They went away this afternoon," said Mrs. Crane, tossing Jasper's
+sovereigns on the table as if they burned her fingers.  "But leave the
+fugitives to me.  I will find them."
+
+Jasper relieved his angry mind by a series of guilty but meaningless
+expletives; and then, seeing no further use to which Mrs. Crane's wish
+could be applied at present, finished the remainder of her brandy, and
+wished her good-night, with a promise to call again, but without any
+intimation of his own address.  As soon as he was gone, Mrs. Crane once
+more summoned Bridget.
+
+"You told me last week that your brother-in-law, Simpson, wished to go to
+America, that he had the offer of employment there, but that he could not
+afford the fare of the voyage.  I promised I would help him if it was a
+service to you."
+
+"You are a hangel, miss!"  exclaimed Bridget, dropping a low courtesy,
+--so low that it seemed as if she was going on her knees.  "And may you
+have your deserts in the next blessed world, where there are no black-
+hearted villings."
+
+"Enough, enough," said Mrs. Crane, recoiling perhaps from that grateful
+benediction.  "You have been faithful to me, as none else have ever been;
+but this time I do not serve you in return so much as I meant to do.  The
+service is reciprocal, if your brother-in-law will do me a favour.  He
+takes with him his daughter, a mere child.  Bridget, let them enter their
+names on the steam-vessel as William and Sophy Waife; they can, of
+course, resume their own name when the voyage is over.  There is the fare
+for them, and something more.  Pooh, no thanks.  I can spare the money.
+See your brother-in-law the first thing in the morning; and remember that
+they go by the next vessel, which sails from Liverpool on Thursday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+     Those poor pocket-cannibals, how society does persecute them!  Even
+     a menial servant would give warning if disturbed at his meals.  But
+     your man-eater is the meekest of creatures; he will never give
+     warning, and--not often take it.
+
+Whatever the source that had supplied Jasper Losely with the money from
+which he had so generously extracted the sovereigns intended to console
+Waife for the loss of Sophy, that source either dried up or became wholly
+inadequate to his wants; for elasticity was the felicitous peculiarity of
+Mr. Losely's wants.  They accommodated themselves to the state of his
+finances with mathematical precision, always requiring exactly five times
+the amount of the means placed at his disposal.  From a shilling to a
+million, multiply his wants by five times the total of his means, and you
+arrived at a just conclusion.  Jasper called upon Poole, who was slowly
+recovering, but unable to leave his room; and finding that gentleman in a
+more melancholy state of mind than usual, occasioned by Uncle Sam's
+brutal declaration that "if responsible for his godson's sins he was not
+responsible for his debts," and that he really thought "the best thing
+Samuel Dolly could do, was to go to prison for a short time and get
+whitewashed," Jasper began to lament his own hard fate: "And just when
+one of the finest women in Paris has come here on purpose to see me,"
+said the lady-killer,--"a lady who keeps her carriage, Dolly!  Would have
+introduced you, if you had been well enough to go out.  One can't be
+always borrowing of her.  I wish one could.  There's mother Crane would
+sell her gown off her back for me; but 'Gad, sir, she snubs, and
+positively frightens me.  Besides, she lays traps to demean me; set me to
+work like a clerk!--not that I would hurt your feelings, Dolly: if you
+are a clerk, or something of that sort, you are a gentleman at heart.
+Well, then, we are both done up and cleaned out; and my decided opinion
+is, that nothing is left but a bold stroke."
+
+"I have no objection to bold strokes, but I don't see any; and Uncle
+Sam's bold stroke of the Fleet prison is not at all to my taste."
+
+"Fleet prison!  Fleet fiddlestick!  No.  You have never been in Russia.
+Why should we not go there both?  My Paris friend, Madame Caumartin, was
+going to Italy, but her plans are changed, and she is now all for St.
+Petersburg.  She will wait a few days for you to get well.  We will all
+go together and enjoy ourselves.  The Russians dote upon whist.  We shall
+get into their swell sets and live like princes."  Therewith Jasper
+launched forth on the text of Russian existence in such glowing terms
+that Dolly Poole shut his aching eyes and fancied himself sledging down
+the Neva, covered with furs; a countess waiting for him at dinner, and
+counts in dozens ready to offer bets to a fabulous amount that Jasper
+Losely lost the rubber.
+
+Having lifted his friend into this region of aerial castles, Jasper then,
+descending into the practical world, wound up with the mournful fact that
+one could not get to St.  Petersburg, nor when there into swell sets,
+without having some little capital on hand.
+
+"I tell you what we will do.  Madame Caumartin lives in prime style.  Get
+old Latham, your employer, to discount her bill at three months' date for
+L500, and we will be all off in a crack."  Poole shook his head.  "Old
+Latham is too knowing a file for that.  A foreigner!  He'd want
+security."
+
+"I'll be security."
+
+Dolly shook his head a second time, still more emphatically than the
+first.
+
+"But you say he does discount paper,--gets rich on it?"
+
+"Yes, gets rich on 'it, which he might not do if he discounted the paper
+you propose.  No offence."
+
+"Oh, no offence among friends!  You have taken him bills which he has
+discounted?"
+
+"Yes,--good paper."
+
+"Any paper signed by good names is good paper.  We can sign good names if
+we know their handwritings."
+
+Dolly started, and turned white.  Knave he was,--cheat at cards, blackleg
+on the turf,--but forgery! that crime was new to him.  The very notion of
+it brought on a return of fever; and while Jasper was increasing his
+malady by arguing with his apprehensions, luckily for Poole, Uncle Sam
+came in.  Uncle Sam, a sagacious old tradesman, no sooner clapped eyes on
+the brilliant Losely than he conceived for him a distrustful repugnance,
+similar to that with which an experienced gander may regard a fox in
+colloquy with its gosling.  He had already learned enough of his godson's
+ways and chosen society to be assured that Samuel Dolly had indulged in
+very anti-commercial tastes, and been sadly contaminated by very anti-
+commercial friends.  He felt persuaded that Dolly's sole chance of
+redemption was in working on his mind while his body was still suffering,
+so that Poole might, on recovery, break with all former associations.
+On seeing Jasper in the dress of an exquisite, with the thrws of a prize-
+fighter, Uncle Sam saw the stalwart incarnation of all the sins which a
+godfather had vowed that a godson should renounce.  Accordingly, he made
+himself so disagreeable that Losely, in great disgust, took a hasty
+departure.  And Uncle Sam, as he helped the nurse to plunge Dolly into
+his bed, had the brutality to tell his nephew, in very plain terms, that
+if ever he found that Brummagem gent in Poole's rooms again, Poole would
+never again see the colour of Uncle Sam's money.  Dolly beginning to
+blubber, the good man relenting patted him on the back, and said, "But as
+soon as you are well, I'll carry you with me to my country-box, and keep
+you out of harm's way till I find you a wife, who will comb your head for
+you;" at which cheering prospect Poole blubbered more dolefully than
+before.  On retiring to his own lodging in the Gloucester Coffee-house,
+Uncle Sam, to make all sure, gave positive orders to Poole's landlady,
+who respected in Uncle Sam the man who might pay what Poole owed to her,
+on no account to let in any of Dolly's profligate friends, but especially
+the chap he had found there; adding, "'T is as much as my nephew's life
+is worth; and, what is more to the purpose, as much as your bill is."
+Accordingly, when Jasper presented himself at Poole's door again that
+very evening, the landlady apprised him of her orders; and, proof to his
+insinuating remonstrances, closed the door in his face.  But a French
+chronicler has recorded that when Henry IV. was besieging Paris, though
+not a loaf of bread could enter the walls, love-letters passed between
+city and camp as easily as if there had been no siege at all.  And does
+not Mercury preside over money as well as Love?  Jasper, spurred on by
+Madame Caumartin, who was exceedingly anxious to exchange London for St.
+Petersburg as soon as possible, maintained a close and frequent
+correspondence with Poole by the agency of the nurse, who luckily was not
+above being bribed by shillings.  Poole continued to reject the villany
+proposed by Jasper; but, in course of the correspondence, he threw out
+rather incoherently--for his mind began somewhat to wander--a scheme
+equally flagitious, which Jasper, aided perhaps by Madame Caumartin's yet
+keener wit, caught up, and quickly reduced to deliberate method.  Old Mr.
+Latham, amongst the bills he discounted, kept those of such more bashful
+customers as stipulated that their resort to temporary accommodation
+should be maintained a profound secret in his own safe.  Amongst these
+bills Poole knew that there was one for L1,000 given by a young nobleman
+of immense estates, but so entailed that he could neither sell nor
+mortgage, and, therefore, often in need of a few hundreds for pocket
+money.  The nobleman's name stood high.  His fortune was universally
+known; his honour unimpeachable.  A bill of his any one would cash at
+sight.  Could Poole but obtain that bill!  It had, he believed, only a
+few weeks yet to run.  Jasper or Madame Caumartin might get it discounted
+even by Lord -------'s own banker; and if that were too bold, by any
+professional bill-broker, and all three be off before a suspicion could
+arise.  But to get at that safe, a false key might be necessary.  Poole
+suggested a waxen impression of the lock.  Jasper sent him a readier
+contrivance,--a queer-looking tool, that looked an instrument of torture.
+All now necessary was for Poole to recover sufficiently to return to
+business, and to get rid of Uncle Sam by a promise to run down to the
+country the moment Poole had conscientiously cleared some necessary
+arrears of work.  While this correspondence went on, Jasper Losely
+shunned Mrs. Crane, and took his meals and spent his leisure hours with
+Madame Caumartin.  He needed no dressing-gown and slippers to feel
+himself at home there.  Madame Canmartin had really taken a showy house
+in a genteel street.  Her own appearance was eminently what the French
+call /distingue/; dressed to perfection from head to foot; neat and
+finished as an epigram; her face in shape like a thoroughbred cobra-
+capella,--low smooth frontal widening at the summit, chin tapering but
+jaw strong, teeth marvellously white, small, and with points sharp as
+those in the maw of the fish called the "Sea Devil;" eyes like dark
+emeralds, of which the pupils, when she was angry or when she was
+scheming, retreated upward towards the temples, emitting a luminous green
+ray that shot through space like the gleam that escapes from a dark-
+lantern; complexion superlatively feminine (call it not pale but white,
+as if she lived on blanched almonds, peach-stones, and arsenic); hands so
+fine and so bloodless, with fingers so pointedly taper there seemed
+stings at their tips; manners of one who had ranged all ranks of society
+from highest to lowest, and duped the most wary in each of them.  Did she
+please it, a crown prince might have thought her youth must have passed
+in the chambers of porphyry!  Did she please it, an old soldier would
+have sworn the creature had been a vivandiere,--in age, perhaps,
+bordering on forty.  She looked younger, but had she been a hundred and
+twenty, she could not have been more wicked.  Ah, happy indeed for Sophy,
+if it were to save her youth from ever being fostered in elegant boudoirs
+by those bloodless hands, that the crippled vagabond had borne her away
+from Arabella's less cruel unkindness; better far even Rugge's village
+stage; better far stealthy by-lanes, feigned names, and the erudite
+tricks of Sir Isaac!
+
+But still it is due even to Jasper to state here that, in Losely's recent
+design to transfer Sophy from Mr. Waife's care to that of Madame
+Caumartin, the Sharper harboured no idea of a villany so execrable as the
+character of the Parisienne led the jealous Arabella to suspect.  His
+real object in getting the child at that time once more into his power
+was (whatever its nature) harmless compared with the mildest of
+Arabella's dark doubts.  But still if Sophy had been regained, and the
+object, on regaining her, foiled (as it probably would have been), what
+then might have become of her,--lost, perhaps, forever, to Waife,--in a
+foreign land and under such guardianship?  Grave question, which Jasper
+Losely, who exercised so little foresight in the paramount question,
+namely, what some day or other would become of himself? was not likely to
+rack his brains by conjecturing!
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Crane was vigilant.  The detective police-officer sent to
+her by Mr. Rugge could not give her the information which Rugge desired,
+and which she did not longer need.  She gave the detective some
+information respecting Madame Caumartin.  One day towards the evening she
+was surprised by a visit from Uncle Sam.  He called ostensibly to thank
+her for her kindness to his godson and nephew; and to beg her not to be
+offended if he had been rude to Mr. Losely, who, he understood from
+Dolly, was a particular friend of hers.  "You see, ma'am, Samuel Dolly is
+a weak young man, and easily led astray; but, luckily for himself, he has
+no money and no stomach.  So he may repent in time; and if I could find a
+wife to manage him, he has not a bad head for the main chance, and may
+become a practical man.  Repeatedly I have told him he should go to
+prison, but that was only to frighten him; fact is, I want to get him
+safe down into the country, and he don't take to that.  So I am forced to
+say, 'My box, home-brewed and South-down, Samuel Dolly, or a Lunnon jail
+and debtors' allowance.'  Must give a young man his choice, my dear
+lady."
+
+Mrs. Crane observing that what he said was extremely sensible, Uncle Sam
+warmed in his confidence.
+
+"And I thought I had him, till I found Mr. Losely in his sick-room; but
+ever since that day, I don't know how it is, the lad has had something on
+his mind, which I don't half like,--cracky, I think, my dear lady,--
+cracky.  I suspect that old nurse passes letters.  I taxed her with it,
+and she immediately wanted to take her Bible-oath, and smelt of gin,
+two things which, taken together, look guilty."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Crane, growing much interested, "if Mr. Losely and Mr.
+Poole do correspond, what then?"
+
+"That's what I want to know, ma'am.  Excuse me; I don't wish to disparage
+Mr. Losely,--a dashing gent, and nothing worse, I dare say.  But certain
+sure I am that he has put into Samuel Dolly's head something which has
+cracked it!  There is the lad now up and dressed, when he ought to be in
+bed, and swearing he'll go to old Latham's to-morrow, and that long
+arrears of work are on his conscience!  Never heard him talk of
+conscience before: that looks guilty!  And it does not frighten him any
+longer when I say he shall go to prison for his debts; and he's very
+anxious to get me out of Lunnon; and when I threw in a word about Mr.
+Losely (slyly, my good lady,--just to see its effect), he grew as white
+as that paper; and then he began strutting and swelling, and saying that
+Mr. Losely would be a great man, and he should be a great man, and that
+he did not care for my money; he could get as much money as he liked.
+That looks guilty, my dear lady.  And oh," cried Uncle Sam, clasping his
+hands, "I do fear that he's thinking of something worse than he has ever
+done before, and his brain can't stand it.  And, ma'am, he has a great
+respect for you; and you've a friendship for Mr. Losely.  Now, just
+suppose that Mr. Losely should have been thinking of what your flash
+sporting gents call a harmless spree, and my sister's son should, being
+cracky, construe into something criminal.  Oh, Mrs. Crane, do go and see
+Mr. Losely, and tell him that Samuel Dolly is not safe,--is not safe!"
+
+"Much better that I should go to your nephew," said Mrs. Crane; "and with
+your leave I will do so at once.  Let me see him alone.  Where shall I
+find you afterwards?"
+
+"At the Gloucester Coffee-house.  Oh, my dear lady, how can I thank you
+enough?  The boy can be nothing to you; but to me, he's my sister's son,
+--the blackguard!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                   "Dices laborantes in uno
+                    Penelopen vitreamque Circen."--HORAT.
+
+Mrs. Crane found Poole in his little sitting-room, hung round with prints
+of opera-dancers, prize-fighters, race-horses, and the dog Billy.  Samuel
+Dolly was in full dress.  His cheeks, usually so pale, seemed much
+flushed.  He was evidently in a state of high excitement, bowed extremely
+low to Mrs. Crane, called her Countess, asked if she had been lately on
+the Continent and if she knew Madame Caumartin, and whether the nobility
+at St. Petersburg were jolly, or stuck-up fellows, who gave themselves
+airs,--not waiting for her answer.  In fact his mind was unquestionably
+disordered.
+
+Arabella Crane abruptly laid her hand on his shoulder.  "You are going to
+the gallows," she said suddenly.  "Down on your knees, and tell me all,
+and I will keep your secret, and save you; lie, and you are lost!"
+
+Poole burst into tears, and dropped on his knees as he was told.
+
+In ten minutes Mrs. Crane knew all that she cared to know, possessed
+herself of Losely's letters, and, leaving Poole less light-headed and
+more light-hearted, she hastened to Uncle Sam at the Gloucester Coffee-
+house.  "Take your nephew, out of town this evening, and do not let him
+from your sight for the next six months.  Hark you, he will never be a
+good man; but you may save him from the hulks.  Do so.  Take my advice."
+She was gone before Uncle Sam could answer.  She next proceeded to the
+private house of the detective with whom she had before conferred; this
+time less to give than to receive information.  Not half an hour after
+her interview with him, Arabella Crane stood in the street wherein was
+placed the showy house of Madame Caumartin.  The lamps in the street were
+now lighted; the street, even at day a quiet one, was comparatively
+deserted.  All the windows in the Frenchwoman's house were closed with
+shutters and curtains, except on the drawing-room floor.  From those the
+lights within streamed over a balcony filled with gay plants; one of the
+casements was partially open.  And now and then, where the watcher stood,
+she could just catch the glimpse of a passing form behind the muslin
+draperies, or hear the sound of some louder laugh.  In her dark-gray
+dress and still darker mantle, Arabella Crane stood motionless, her eyes
+fixed on those windows.  The rare foot-passenger who brushed by her
+turned involuntarily to glance at the countenance of one so still, and
+then as involuntarily to survey the house to which that countenance was
+lifted.  No such observer so incurious as not to hazard conjecture what
+evil to that house was boded by the dark lurid eyes that watched it with
+so fixed a menace.  Thus she remained, sometimes, indeed, moving from her
+post, as a sentry moves from his, slowly pacing a few steps to and fro,
+returning to the same place, and again motionless; thus she remained for
+hours.  Evening deepened into night; night grew near to dawn: she was
+still there in that street, and still her eyes were on that house.  At
+length the door opened noiselessly; a tall man tripped forth with a gay
+light step, and humming the tune of a gay French chanson.  As he came
+straight towards the spot where Arabella Crane was at watch, from her
+dark mantle stretched forth her long arm and lean hand and seized him.
+He started and recognized her.
+
+"You here!"  he exclaimed, "you!--at such an hour,--you!"
+
+"Ay, Jasper Losely, here to warn you.  To-morrow the officers of justice
+will be in that accursed house.  To-morrow that woman--not for her worst
+crimes, they elude the law, but for her least by which the law hunts her
+down--will be a prisoner,--no, you shall not return to warn her as I warn
+you" (for Jasper here broke away, and retreated some steps towards the
+house); "or, if you do, share her fate.  I cast you off."
+
+"What do you mean?"  said Jasper, halting, till with slow steps she
+regained his side.  "Speak more plainly: if poor Madame Caumartin has got
+into a scrape, which I don't think likely, what have I to do with it?"
+
+"The woman you call Caumartin fled from Paris to escape its tribunals.
+She has been tracked; the French government have claimed her--ho!--you
+smile.  This does not touch you?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"But there are charges against her from English tradesmen; and if it be
+proved that you knew her in her proper name,--the infamous Gabrielle
+Desmarets; if it be proved that you have passed off the French billets de
+banque that she stole; if you were her accomplice in obtaining goods
+under her false name; if you, enriched by her robberies, were aiding and
+abetting her as a swindler here,--though you may be safe from the French
+law, will you be safe from the English?  You may be innocent, Jasper
+Losely; if so, fear nothing.  You may be guilty: if so, hide, or follow
+me!"
+
+Jasper paused.  His first impulse was to trust implicitly to Mrs. Crane,
+and lose not a moment in profiting by such counsels of concealment or
+flight as an intelligence so superior to his own could suggest.  But
+suddenly remembering that Poole had undertaken to get the bill for L1,000
+by the next day,--that if flight were necessary, there was yet a chance
+of flight with booty,--his constitutional hardihood, and the grasping
+cupidity by which it was accompanied, made him resolve at least to hazard
+the delay of a few hours.  And, after all, might not Mrs. Crane
+exaggerate?  Was not this the counsel of a jealous woman?  "Pray," said
+he, moving on, and fixing quick keen eyes on her as she walked by his
+side, "pray, how did you learn all these particulars?"
+
+"From a detective policeman employed to discover Sophy.  In conferring
+with him, the name of Jasper Losely as her legal protector was of course
+stated; that name was already coupled with the name of the false
+Caumartin.  Thus, indirectly, the child you would have consigned to that
+woman saves you from sharing that woman's ignominy and doom."
+
+"Stuff!"  said Jasper, stubbornly, though he winced at her words:
+"I don't, on reflection, see that anything can be proved against me.
+I am not bound to know why a lady changes her name, nor how she comes by
+her money.  And as to her credit with tradesmen,--nothing to speak of:
+most of what she has got is paid for; what is not paid for is less than
+the worth of her goods.  Pooh!  I am not so easily frightened; much
+obliged to you all the same.  Go home now; 't is horridly late.  Good-
+night, or rather good-morning."
+
+"Jasper, mark me, if you see that woman again; if you attempt to save or
+screen her,--I shall know, and you lose in me your last friend, last
+hope, last plank in a devouring sea!"
+
+These words were so solemnly uttered that they thrilled the heart of the
+reckless man.  "I have no wish to screen or save her," he said, with
+selfish sincerity.  "And after what you have said I would as soon enter
+a fireship as that house.  But let me have some hours to consider what
+is best to be done."
+
+"Yes, consider--I shall expect you to-morrow."
+
+He went his way up the twilight streets towards a new lodging he had
+hired not far from the showy house.  She drew her mantle close round her
+gaunt figure, and, taking the opposite direction, threaded thoroughfares
+yet lonelier, till she gained the door, and was welcomed back by the
+faithful Bridget.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+     Hope, tells a flattering tale to Mr. Rugge.  He is undeceived by a
+     solicitor; and left to mourn; but in turn, though unconsciously, Mr.
+     Rugge deceives the solicitor, and the solicitor deceives his
+     client,--which is 6s. 8d. in the solicitor's pocket.
+
+The next morning Arabella Crane was scarcely dressed before Mr. Rugge
+knocked at her door.  On the previous day the detective had informed him
+that William and Sophy Waife were discovered to have sailed for America.
+Frantic, the unhappy manager hurried away to the steam-packet office, and
+was favoured by an inspection of the books, which confirmed the hateful
+tidings.  As if in mockery of his bereaved and defrauded state, on
+returning home he found a polite note from Mr. Gotobed, requesting him to
+call at the office of that eminent solicitor, with reference to a young
+actress, named Sophy Waife, and hinting "that the visit might prove to
+his advantage!"  Dreaming for a wild moment that Mr. Losely, conscience-
+stricken, might through his solicitor pay back his L100, he rushed
+incontinent to Mr. Gotobed's office, and was at once admitted into the
+presence of that stately practitioner.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Gotobed, with formal politeness, "but
+I heard a day or two ago accidentally from my head clerk, who had learned
+it also accidentally from a sporting friend, that you were exhibiting at
+Humberston, during the race-week, a young actress, named on the play-
+bills (here is one) 'Juliet Araminta,' and whom, as I am informed, you
+had previously exhibited in Surrey and elsewhere; but she was supposed to
+have relinquished that earlier engagement, and left your stage with her
+grandfather, William Waife.  I am instructed by a distinguished client,
+who is wealthy, and who from motives of mere benevolence interests
+himself in the said William and Sophy Waife, to discover their residence.
+Please, therefore, to render up the child to my charge, apprising me also
+of the address of her grandfather, if he be not with you; and without
+waiting for further instructions from my client, who is abroad, I will
+venture to say that any sacrifice in the loss of your juvenile actress
+will be most liberally compensated."
+
+"Sir," cried the miserable and imprudent Rugge, "I paid L100 for that
+fiendish child,--a three years' engagement,--and I have been robbed.
+Restore me the L100, and I will tell you where she is, and her vile
+grandfather also."
+
+At hearing so bad a character lavished upon objects recommended to his
+client's disinterested charity, the wary solicitor drew in his pecuniary
+horns.
+
+"Mr. Rugge," said he, "I understand from your words that you cannot place
+the child Sophy, alias Juliet Araminta, in my hands.  You ask L100 to
+inform me where she is.  Have you a lawful claim on her?"
+
+"Certainly, sir: she is my property."
+
+"Then it is quite clear that though you may know where she is, you cannot
+get at her yourself, and cannot, therefore, place her in my hands.
+Perhaps she 's--in Heaven!"
+
+"Confound her, sir! no--in America! or on the seas to it."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I have just come from the steam-packet office, and seen the names in
+their book.  William and Sophy Waife sailed from Liverpool last Thursday
+week."
+
+"And they formed an engagement with you, received your money; broke the
+one, absconded with the other.  Bad characters indeed!"
+
+"Bad!  you may well say that,--a set of swindling scoundrels, the whole
+kit and kin.  And the ingratitude!" continued Rugge; "I was more than a
+father to that child" (he began to whimper); "I had a babe of my own
+once; died of convulsions in teething.  I thought that child would have
+supplied its place, and I dreamed of the York Theatre; but"--here his
+voice was lost in the folds of a marvellously dirty red pocket-
+handkerchief.
+
+Mr. Gotobed having now, however, learned all that he cared to learn, and
+not being a soft-hearted man (first-rate solicitors rarely are), here
+pulled out his watch, and said,
+
+"Sir, you have been very ill-treated, I perceive.  I must wish you good-
+day; I have an engagement in the City.  I cannot help you back to your
+L100, but accept this trifle (a L5 note) for your loss of time in
+calling" (ringing the bell violently).  "Door,--show out this gentleman."
+
+That evening Mr. Gotobed wrote at length to Guy Darrell, informing him
+that, after great pains and prolonged research, he had been so fortunate
+as to ascertain that the strolling player and the little girl whom Mr.
+Darrell had so benevolently requested him to look up were very bad
+characters, and had left the country for the United States, as happily
+for England bad characters were wont to do.
+
+That letter reached Guy Darrell when he was far away, amidst the forlorn
+pomp of some old Italian city, and Lionel's tale of the little girl not
+very fresh in his gloomy thoughts.  Naturally, he supposed that the boy
+had been duped by a pretty face and his own inexperienced kindly heart.
+And so, and so,--why, so end all the efforts of men who entrust to others
+the troublesome execution of humane intentions!  The scales of earthly
+justice are poised in their quivering equilibrium, not by huge hundred-
+weights, but by infinitesimal grains, needing the most wary caution, the
+most considerate patience, the most delicate touch, to arrange or
+readjust.  Few of our errors, national or individual, come from the
+design to be unjust; most of them from sloth, or incapacity to grapple
+with the difficulties of being just.  Sins of commission may not,
+perhaps, shock the retrospect of conscience.  Large and obtrusive to view
+we have confessed, mourned, repented, possibly atoned them.  Sins of
+omission so veiled amidst our hourly emotions, blent, confused, unseen,
+in the conventional routine of existence,--alas! could these suddenly
+emerge from their shadow, group together in serried mass and accusing
+order,--alas, alas!  would not the best of us then start in dismay, and
+would not the proudest humble himself at the Throne of Mercy?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+     Joy, nevertheless, does return to Mr. Rugge: and hope now inflicts
+     herself on Mrs. Crane; a very fine-looking hope too,--six feet one,
+     --strong as Achilles, and as fleet of foot!
+
+Buy we have left Mr. Rugge at Mrs. Crane's door; admit him.  He bursts
+into her drawing-room wiping his brows.  "Ma'am, they're off to America!"
+
+"So I have heard.  You are fairly entitled to the return of your money--"
+
+"Entitled, of course, but--"
+
+"There it is; restore to me the contract for the child's services."
+
+Rugge gazed on a roll of bank-notes, and could scarcely believe his eyes.
+He darted forth his hand,--the notes receded like the dagger in Macbeth.
+"First the contract," said Mrs. Crane.  Rugge drew out his greasy pocket-
+book, and extracted the worthless engagement.
+
+"Henceforth, then," said Mrs. Crane, "you have no right to complain; and
+whether or not the girl ever again fall in your way, your claim over her
+ceases."
+
+"The gods be praised! it does, ma'am, I have had quite enough of her.
+But you are every inch a lady, and allow me to add that I put you on my
+free list for life."
+
+Rugge gone, Arabella Crane summoned Bridget to her presence.
+
+"Lor', miss," cried Bridget, impulsively, "who'd think you'd been up all
+night raking!  I have not seen you look so well this many a year."
+
+"Ah," said Arabella Crane, "I will tell you why.  I have done what for
+many a year I never thought I should do again,--a good action.  That
+child,--that Sophy,--do you remember how cruelly I used her?"
+
+"Oh, miss, don't go for to blame yourself; you fed her, you clothed her,
+when her own father, the villing, sent her away from hisself to you,--you
+of all people, you.  How could you be caressing and fawning on his
+child,--their child?"
+
+Mrs. Crane hung her head gloomily.  "What is past is past.  I have lived
+to save that child, and a curse seems lifted from my soul.  Now listen.
+I shall leave London--England--probably this evening.  You will keep this
+house; it will be ready for me any moment I return.  The agent who
+collects my house-rents will give you money as you want it.  Stint not
+yourself, Bridget.  I have been saving and saving and saving for dreary
+years,--nothing else to interest me, and I am richer than I seem."
+
+"But where are you going, miss?"  said Bridget, slowly recovering from
+the stupefaction occasioned by her mistress's announcement.
+
+"I don't know; I don't care."
+
+"Oh, gracious stars! is it with that dreadful Jasper Losely?--it is, it
+is.  You are crazed, you are bewitched, miss!"
+
+"Possibly I am crazed,--possibly bewitched; but I take that man's life to
+mine as a penance for all the evil mine has ever known; and a day or two
+since I should have said, with rage and shame, 'I cannot help it; I
+loathe myself that I can care what becomes of him.'  Now, without rage,
+without shame, I say, 'The man whom I once so loved shall not die on a
+gibbet if I can help it' and, please Heaven, help it I will."
+
+The grim woman folded her arms on her breast, and raising her head to its
+full height, there was in her face and air a stern gloomy grandeur, which
+could not have been seen without a mixed sensation of compassion and awe.
+
+"Go now, Bridget; I have said all.  He will be here soon: he will come;
+he must come; he has no choice; and then--and then--" she closed her
+eyes, bowed her head, and shivered.
+
+Arabella Crane was, as usual, right in her predictions.  Before noon
+Jasper came,--came, not with his jocund swagger, but with that sidelong
+sinister look--of the man whom the world cuts--triumphantly restored to
+its former place in his visage.  Madame Caumartin had been arrested;
+Poole had gone into the country with Uncle Sam; Jasper had seen a police-
+officer at the door of his own lodgings.  He slunk away from the
+fashionable thoroughfares, slunk to the recesses of Podden Place, slunk
+into Arabella Crane's prim drawing-room, and said sullenly, "All is up;
+here I am!"
+
+Three days afterwards, in a quiet street in a quiet town of Belgium,--
+wherein a sharper, striving to live by his profession, would soon become
+a skeleton,--in a commodious airy apartment, looking upon a magnificent
+street, the reverse of noisy, Jasper Losely sat secure, innocuous, and
+profoundly miserable.  In another house, the windows of which--facing
+those of Jasper's sitting-room, from an upper story-commanded so good a
+view therein that it placed him under a surveillance akin to that
+designed by Mr. Bentham's reformatory Panopticon, sat Arabella Crane.
+Whatever her real feelings towards Jasper Losely (and what those feelings
+were no virile pen can presume authoritatively to define; for lived there
+ever a man who thoroughly understood a woman?), or whatever in earlier
+life might have been their reciprocated vows of eternal love,--not only
+from the day that Jasper, on his return to his native shores, presented
+himself in Podden Place, had their intimacy been restricted to the
+austerest bonds of friendship, but after Jasper had so rudely declined
+the hand which now fed him, Arabella Crane had probably perceived that
+her sole chance of retaining intellectual power over his lawless being
+necessitated the utter relinquishment of every hope or project that could
+expose her again to his contempt.  Suiting appearances to reality, the
+decorum of a separate house was essential to the maintenance of that
+authority with which the rigid nature of their intercourse invested her.
+The additional cost strained her pecuniary resources, but she saved in
+her own accommodation in order to leave Jasper no cause to complain of
+any stinting in his.  There, then, she sat by her window, herself unseen,
+eying him in his opposite solitude, accepting for her own life a barren
+sacrifice, but a jealous sentinel on his.  Meditating as she sat and as
+she eyed him,--meditating what employment she could invent, with the
+bribe of emoluments to be paid furtively by her, for those strong hands
+that could have felled an ox, but were nerveless in turning an honest
+penny, and for that restless mind hungering for occupation, and with the
+digestion of an ostrich for dice and debauch, riot and fraud, but queasy
+as an exhausted dyspeptic at the reception of one innocent amusement, one
+honourable toil.  But while that woman still schemes how to rescue from
+hulks or halter that execrable man, who shall say that he is without a
+chance?  A chance he has: WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V4 ***
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