I have done; open the door, sir."

CHAPTER IX.

THE WRECK AND THE LIFE-BOAT IN A FOG.

The next day, a little after noon, Jasper Losely, coming back from
Alhambra Villa--furious, desperate, knowing not where to turn for bread,
or on whom to pour his rage--beheld suddenly, in a quiet, half-built
street, which led from the suburb to the New Road, Arabella Crane
standing right in his path. She had emerged from one of the many
straight intersecting roads which characterise that crude nebula of
a future city; and the woman and the man met thus face to face; not
another passer-by visible in the thoroughfare;--at a distance the dozing
hack cab-stand; round and about them carcases of brick and mortar--some
with gaunt scaffolding fixed into their ribs, and all looking yet more
weird in their raw struggle into shape through the living haze of a
yellow fog.

Losely, seeing Arabella thus planted in his way, recoiled; and the
superstition in which he had long associated her image with baffled
schemes and perilous hours sent the wrathful blood back through his
veins so quickly that he heard his heart beat!

MRS. CRANE.--"SO! You see we cannot help meeting, Jasper dear, do what
you will to shun me."

LOSELY.--"I--I--you always startle me so!--you are in town, then?--to
stay?--your old quarters?"

MRS. CRANE.--"Why ask? You cannot wish to know where I am--you would
not call. But how fares it?--what do you do?--how do you live? You look
ill--Poor Jasper."

LOSELY (fiercely).--"Hang your pity, and give me some money."

MRS. CRANE (calmly laying her lean hand on the arm which was darted
forward more in menace than entreaty, and actually terrifying the
Gladiator as she linked that deadly arm into her own).--"I said you
would always find me when at the worst of your troubles. And so, Jasper,
it shall be till this right hand of yours is powerless as the clay at
our feet. Walk--walk; you are not afraid of me?--walk on, tell me all.
Where have you just been?"

Jasper, therewith reminded of his wrongs, poured out a volley of abuse
on Poole, communicating to Mrs. Crane the whole story of his claims
on that gentleman--the loss of the pocket-book filched from him, and
Poole's knowledge that he was thus disarmed.

"And the coward," said he, grinding his teeth, "got out of his
window--and three policemen in his garden. He must have bribed a
pickpocket--low knave that he is. But I shall find out--and then--"

"And then, Jaspe