-on the six
feet one of faultless symmetry that captivated foolish, and some even
sensible women. Gaming was, however, his vice by predilection. A month
before Arabella met him, he had had a rare run of luck. On the strength
of it he had resolved to return to London, and (wholly oblivious of the
best of creatures till she had thus startled him) hunt out and swoop off
with an heiress. Three French friends accompanied him. Each had the same
object. Each believed that London swarmed with heiresses. They were all
three fine-looking men. One was a Count,--at least he said so. But proud
of his rank?--not a bit of it: all for liberty (no man more likely to
lose it)--all for fraternity (no man you would less love as a brother).
And as for _egalite!_--the son of a shoemaker who was _homme de
lettres_, and wrote in a journal, inserted a jest on the Count's
courtship. "All men are equal before the pistol," said the Count; and
knowing that in that respect he was equal to most, having practised at
_poupees_ from the age of fourteen, he called out the son of Crispin and
shot him through the lungs. Another of Jasper's travelling friends was
an _enfant die peuple_--boasted that he was a foundling. He made verses
of lugubrious strain, and taught Jasper how to shuffle at whist. The
third, like Jasper, had been designed for trade; and, like Jasper,
he had a soul above it. In politics he was a Communist--in talk
Philanthropist. He was the cleverest man of them all, and is now at the
galleys. The fate of his two compatriots--more obscure it is not my duty
to discover. In that peculiar walk of life Jasper is as much as I can
possibly manage.

It need not be said that Jasper carefully abstained from reminding his
old city friends of his existence. It was his object and his hope to
drop all identity with that son of a convict who had been sent out of
the way to escape humiliation. In this resolve he was the more confirmed
because he had no old city friends out of whom anything could be well
got. His poor uncle, who alone of his relations in England had been
privy to his change of name, was dead; his end hastened by grief for
William Losely's disgrace, and the bad reports he had received from
France of the conduct of William Losely's son. That uncle had left, in
circumstances too straitened to admit the waste of a shilling, a widow
of very rigid opinions; who, if ever by some miraculous turn in the
wheel of fortune she could have become rich en