her aunt's she went. Arabella saw Jasper
very often; they became engaged to each other, exchanged vows and
love-tokens, locks of hair, &c. Jasper, already much troubled by duns,
became naturally ardent to insure his felicity and Arabella's supposed
fortune. Arabella at last summoned courage, and spoke to her father. To
her delighted surprise, Mr. Fossett, after some moralising, more on
the uncertainty of life in general than her clandestine proceedings
in particular, agreed to see Mr. Jasper Losely, and asked him down to
dinner. After dinner, over 'a bottle of Lafitte, in an exceedingly plain
but exceedingly weighty silver jug, which made Jasper's mouth water (I
mean the jug), Mr. Fossett, commencing with that somewhat coarse though
royal saying of William the Conqueror, with which he had before edified
his daughter, assured Jasper that he gave his full consent to the young
gentleman's nuptials with Arabella, provided Jasper or his relations
would maintain her in a plain respectable way, and wait for her fortune
till his (Fossett's) will was read. What that fortune would be, Mr.
Fossett declined even to hint. Jasper went away very much cooled. Still
the engagement remained in force; the nuptials were tacitly deferred.
Jasper and his relations maintain a wife! Preposterous idea! It would
take a clan of relations and a Zenana of wives to maintain in that state
to which he deemed himself entitled--Jasper himself! But just as he was
meditating the possibility of a compromise with old Fossett, by which
he would agree to wait till the will was read for contingent advantages,
provided Fossett, in his turn, would agree in the mean while to afford
lodging and board, with a trifle for pocket-money, to Arabella and
himself, in the Clapham villa, which, though not partial to rural
scenery, Jasper preferred, on the whole, to a second floor in the
City,--old Fossett fell ill, took to his bed; was unable to attend to
his business, some one else attended to it; and the consequence
was, that the house stopped payment, and was discovered to have been
insolvent for the last ten years. Not a discreditable bankruptcy. There
might perhaps be seven shillings in the pound ultimately paid, and not
more than forty families irretrievably ruined. Old Fossett, safe in
his bed, bore the affliction with philosophical composure; observed
to Arabella that he had always warned her of the ups and downs in this
sphere of trial; referred again with pride to