ct. The body attracted
was for the moment kept from the body attracting by the abnormal weights
that had dropped into its pockets. Restore the body thus temporarily
counterpoised to its former lightness, and it would turn to Podden Place
as the needle to the Pole. Meanwhile, oblivious of all such natural
laws, the disloyal Jasper had fixed himself as far from the reach of
the magnet as from Bloomsbury's remotest verge in St. James's animated
centre. The apartment he engaged was showy and commodious. He added
largely to his wardrobe, his dressing-case, his trinket box. Nor, be
it here observed, was Mr. Losely one of those beauish brigands who
wear tawdry scarves over soiled linen, and paste rings upon unwashed
digitals. To do him justice, the man, so stony-hearted to others, loved
and cherished his own person with exquisite tenderness, lavished upon
it delicate attentions, and gave to it the very best he could afford.
He was no coarse debauchee, smelling of bad cigars and ardent spirits.
Cigars, indeed, were not among his vices (at worst the rare peccadillo
of a cigarette): spirit-drinking was; but the monster's digestion was
still so strong that he could have drunk out a gin-palace, and you would
only have sniffed the jasmine or heliotrope on the dainty cambric that
wiped the last drop from his lips. Had his soul been a tenth part as
clean as the form that belied it, Jasper Losely had been a saint!
His apartments secured, his appearance thus revised and embellished,
Jasper's next care was an equipage in keeping; he hired a smart
cabriolet with a high-stepping horse, and, to go behind it, a groom
whose size had been stunted in infancy by provident parents designing
him to earn his bread in the stables as a light-weight, and therefore
mingling his mother's milk with heavy liquors. In short, Jasper Losely
set up to be a buck about town: in that capacity Dolly Poole introduced
him to several young gentlemen who combined commercial vocations with
sporting tastes; they could not but participate in Poole's admiring and
somewhat envious respect for Jasper Losely. There was indeed about the
vigorous miscreant a great deal of false brilliancy. Deteriorated from
earlier youth though the beauty of his countenance might be, it was
still undeniably handsome; and as force of muscle is beauty in itself
in the eyes of young sporting men, so Jasper dazzled many a _gracilis
puer_, who had the ambition to become an athlete, with the rare per