round
you."

"No; I am sick of life--of all things except repose. Arabella, I suffer
horrible pain."

He groaned, for he spoke truly. At that moment the gnaw of the monster
anguish, which fastens on the nerves like a wolf's tooth, was so keen
that he longed to swell his groan into a roar. The old fable of Hercules
in the poisoned tunic was surely invented by some skilled physiologist,
to denote the truth that it is only in the strongest frames that pain
can be pushed into its extremest torture. The heart of the grim woman
was instantly and thoroughly softened. She paused; she made him lean
on her arm; she wiped the drops from his brow; she addressed him in the
most soothing tones of pity. The spasm passed away suddenly as it does
in neuralgic agonies, and with it any gratitude or any remorse in the
breast of the sufferer.

"Yes," he said, "I will call on you; but meanwhile I am without a
farthing. Oh, do not fear that if you helped me now, I should again shun
you. I have no other resource left; nor have I now the spirit I once
had. I no longer now laugh at fatigue and danger."

"But will you swear by all that you yet hold sacred--if, alas! there be
aught which is sacred to you--that you will not again seek the company
of those men who are conspiring to entrap you into the hangman's hands?"

"Seek them again, the ungrateful cowardly blackguards! No, no; I promise
you that--solemnly; it is medical aid that I want; it is rest, I tell
you--rest, rest, rest." Arabella Crane drew forth her purse. "Take what
you will," said she gently. Jasper, whether from the desire to deceive
her, or because her alms were so really distasteful to his strange kind
of pride that he stinted to bare necessity the appeal to them, contented
himself with the third or fourth of the sovereigns that the purse
contained, and after a few words of thanks and promises, he left her
side, and soon vanished in the fog that grew darker and darker as the
night-like wintry day deepened over the silenced thoroughfares.

The woman went her way through the mists, hopeful--through the mists
went the man, hopeful also. Recruiting himself by slight food and strong
drink at a tavern on his road, he stalked on to Darrell's house in
Carlton Gardens; and, learning there that Darrell was at Fawley,
hastened to the station from which started the train to the town nearest
to the old Manor-house; reached that town safely, and there rested for
the night.

BOOK