part, Jasper said that he had
just returned to London--that he had abandoned for ever all idea of
a commercial life--that his father's misfortune (he gave that gentle
appellation to the incident of penal transportation) had severed him
from all former friends, ties, habits--that he had dropped the name of
Losely for ever--entreated Arabella not to betray it--his name now was
Hammond--his "prospects," he said, "fairer than they had ever been."
Under the name of Hammond, as an independent gentleman, he had made
friends more powerful than he could ever have made under the name of
Losely as a city clerk. He blushed to think he had ever been a city
clerk. No doubt he should get into some Government office; and then, oh
then, with assured income and a certainty to rise, he might claim the
longed-for hand of the "best of creatures."

On Arabella's part, she hastily explained her present position. She
was governess to Miss Darrell--that was Miss Darrell. Arabella must not
leave her walking on by herself--she would write to him. Addresses
were exchanged--Jasper gave a very neat card--"Mr. Hammond, No.--, Duke
Street, St. James's."

Arabella, with a beating heart, hastened to join her friend. At the
rapid glance she had taken of her perfidious lover, she thought him, if
possible, improved. His dress, always studied, was more to the fashion
of polished society, more simply correct--his air more decided.
Altogether he looked prosperous, and his manner had never been more
seductive, in its mixture of easy self-confidence and hypocritical
coaxing. In fact, Jasper had not been long in the French commercial
house--to which he had been sent out of the way while his father's trial
was proceeding and the shame of it fresh--before certain licenses of
conduct had resulted in his dismissal. But, meanwhile, he had made many
friends amongst young men of his own age--those loose wild viveurs who,
without doing anything the law can punish as dishonest, contrive for
a few fast years to live very showily on their wits. In that strange
social fermentation which still prevails in a country where an
aristocracy of birth, exceedingly impoverished, and exceedingly numerous
so far as the right to prefix a De to the name, or to stamp a coronet
on the card, can constitute an aristocrat--is diffused amongst
an ambitious, adventurous, restless, and not inelegant young
democracy--each cemented with the other by that fiction of law called
egalite; in that y