gge.

CHAPTER XV.

"When God wills, all winds bring rain."--Ancient Proverb.

The manager had not submitted to the loss of his property in Sophy and
L100 without taking much vain trouble to recover the one or the other.
He had visited Jasper while that gentleman lodged in St. James's; but
the moment he hinted at the return of the L100, Mr. Losely opened both
door and window, and requested the manager to make his immediate choice
of the two. Taking the more usual mode of exit, Mr. Rugge vented his
just indignation in a lawyer's letter, threatening Mr. Losely with an
action for conspiracy and fraud. He had also more than once visited Mrs.
Crane, who somewhat soothed him by allowing that he had been very badly
used, that he ought at least to be repaid his money, and promising to
do her best to persuade Mr. Losely "to behave like a gentleman."
With regard to Sophy herself, Mrs. Crane appeared to feel a profound
indifference. In fact, the hatred which Mrs. Crane had unquestionably
conceived for Sophy while under her charge was much diminished by
Losely's unnatural conduct towards the child. To her it was probably
a matter of no interest whether Sophy was in Rugge's hands or Waife's;
enough for her that the daughter of a woman against whose memory her
fiercest passions were enlisted was, in either case, so far below
herself in the grades of the social ladder.

Perhaps of the two protectors for Sophy, Rugge and Waife, her spite
alone would have given the preference to Waife. He was on a still lower
step of the ladder than the itinerant manager. Nor, though she had so
mortally injured the forlorn cripple in the eyes of Mr. Hartopp, had
she any deliberate purpose of revenge to gratify against him! On the
contrary, if she viewed him with contempt, it was a contempt not unmixed
with pity. It was necessary to make to the Mayor the communications she
had made, or that worthy magistrate would not have surrendered the child
intrusted to him, at least until Waife's return. And really it was a
kindness to the old man to save him both from an agonizing scene with
Jasper, and from the more public opprobrium which any resistance on
his part to Jasper's authority or any altercation between the two would
occasion. And as her main object then was to secure Losely's allegiance
to her, by proving her power to be useful to him, so Waifes and Sophys
and Mayors and Managers were to her but as pawns to be moved and
sacrificed, accordin