r, considering how he mixed his drink last night. We must keep
him jolly and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go back
to his lodging. Whatever you advance I'll pay back to you again.
But I must go up and see how he is now, poor deary."

Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the first
bedroom, and peeped in. Finding that her shorn Samson was asleep
she entered to the bedside and stood regarding him. The fevered
flush on his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened
the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes,
dark brows, and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow
completed the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank
passions, still felt it worth while to recapture, highly important
to recapture as a woman straitened both in means and in reputation.
Her ardent gaze seemed to affect him; his quick breathing became
suspended, and he opened his eyes.

"How are you now, dear?" said she. "It is I--Arabella."

"Ah!--where--oh yes, I remember! You gave me shelter... I am
stranded--ill--demoralized--damn bad! That's what I am!"

"Then do stay here. There's nobody in the house but father and me,
and you can rest till you are thoroughly well. I'll tell them at
the stoneworks that you are knocked up."

"I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!"

"I'll go round and explain. Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or
they'll think we've run away?"

"Yes. You'll find enough money in my pocket there."

Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear
the daylight in his throbbing eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again.
Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her
outdoor things went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the
evening before.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the
corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all
Jude's household possessions, and also the few of Arabella's things
which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there.
Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of
the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and
from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that
when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes in
this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman's apparel, he scarcely
considered how they had come there, or what thei