circumstances. What has become of your Theatrical Exhibition? Gambled it
away? Yet, from what I see of your play, I think you ought not to have
lost, Mr. Rugge."

The ex-manager started.

"What! You knew me before the Storm?--before the lightning struck me,
as I may say, sir--and falling into difficulties, I became-a wreck? You
knew me?--not of the Company?--a spectator?"

"As you say--a spectator. You had once in your employ an actor--clever
old fellow. Waife, I think, he was called."

"Ah! hold! At that name, sir, my wounds bleed afresh. From that
execrable name, sir, there hangs a tale!"

"Indeed! Then it will be a relief to you to tell it," said Losely,
resettling his feet on the hob, and snatching at any diversion from his
own reflections.

"Sir, when a gentleman, who is a gentleman, asks as a favour a specimen
of my powers of recital, not professionally, and has before him the
sparkling goblet, which he does not invite me to share, he insults my
fallen fortunes. Sir, I am poor--I own it; I have fallen into the sere
and yellow leaf, sir; but I have still in this withered bosom the heart
of a Briton!"

"Warm it, Mr. Rugge. Help yourself to the brandy--and the lady too."

"Sir, you are a gentleman; sir, your health. Hag, drink better days
to us both. That woman, sir, is a hag, but she is an honour to her
sex-faithful!"

"It is astonishing how faithful ladies are when not what is called
beautiful. I speak from painful experience," said Losely, growing
debonnair as the liquor relaxed his gloom, and regaining that levity of
tongue which sometimes strayed into wit, and which-springing originally
from animal spirits and redundant health--still came to him mechanically
whenever roused by companionship from alternate intervals of lethargy
and pain. "But, now, Mr. Rugge, I am all ears; perhaps you will be kind
enough to be all tale."

With tragic aspect, unrelaxed by that _jeu de mots_, and still wholly
unrecognising in the massive form and discoloured swollen countenance
of the rough-clad stranger, the elegant proportions, the healthful,
blooming, showy face, and elaborate fopperies of the Jasper Losely who
had sold to him a Phenomenon which proved so evanishing, Rugge entered
into a prolix history of his wrongs at the hands of Waife, of Losely, of
Sophy. Only of Mrs. Crane did he speak with respect; and Jasper then for
the first time learned--and rather with anger for the interference than
gratitude for the