e animal, who can
help feeling for and with grim Arabella Crane?

Poor woman! And will not the experiment succeed? Three evenings does
Jasper Losely devote to this sinless life and its peaceful occupation.
He completes his task; he receives the ten guineas. (How much of that
fee came out of Mrs. Crane's privy purse?) He detects three mistakes,
which justify suspicion of the book-keeper's integrity. Set a thief to
catch a thief! He is praised for acuteness, and promised a still lighter
employment, to be still better paid. He departs, declaring that he will
come the next day, earlier than usual; he volunteers an eulogium upon
work in general; he vows that evenings so happy he has not spent
for years; he leaves Mrs. Crane so much impressed by the hope of his
improvement that, if a good clergyman had found her just at that moment,
she might almost have been induced to pray. But

"Heu quoties fidem
Mutatosque deos flebit!"

Jasper Losely returns not, neither to Podden place or his lodging in the
neighborhood. Days elapse and still he comes not; even Poole does not
know where he has gone; even Poole has not seen him! But that worthy is
now laid up with a serious rheumatic fever--confined to his room and a
water gruel. And Jasper Losely is not the man to intrude himself on the
privacy of a sick chamber. Mrs. Crane, more benevolent, visits Poole
cheers him up--gets him a nurse--writes to Uncle Sam. Poole blesses her.
He hopes that Uncle Sam, moved by the spectacle of the sick-bed will
say, "Don't let your debts fret you: I will pay them!" Whatever her
disappointment or resentment at Jasper's thankless and mysterious
evasion, Arabella Crane is calmly confident of his return. To her
servant, Bridget Greggs, who was perhaps the sole person in the world
who entertained affection for the lone gaunt woman, and who held Jasper
Losely in profound detestation, she said, with tranquil sternness, "That
man has crossed my life, and darkened it. He passed away, and left Night
behind him. He has dared to return. He shall never escape me again till
the grave yawn for one of us."

"But, Lor' love you, miss, you would not put yourself in the power of
such a black-hearted villing?"

"In his power! No, Bridget; fear not, he must be in mine, sooner or
later in mine, hand and foot. Patience!" As she was thus speaking,--a
knock at the door! "It is he; I told you so; quick!"

But it was not Jasper Losely. It was Mr. Ru