then threw himself on the
sofa, and began to doze: the doze deepened, and became sleep. Bridget,
entering to lay the cloth, so found him. She approached on tiptoe,
sniffed the perfume of the pocket-book, saw its gilded corners peep
forth from its lair. She hesitated; she trembled; she was in mortal fear
of that truculent slumberer; but sleep lessens the awe thieves feel
or heroes inspire. She has taken the pocketbook; she has fled with the
booty; she is in Mrs. Crane's apartment not five minutes after Mrs.
Crane has regained its threshold.

Rapidly the jealous woman ransacked the pocket-book; started to see,
elegantly worked with gold threads, in the lining, the words, "SOUVIENS
TOI DE TA GABRIELLE;" no other letters, save the two, of which Jasper
had vouchsafed to her but the glimpse. Over these she hurried her
glittering eyes; and when she restored them to their place, and gave
back the book to Bridget, who stood by breathless and listening, lest
Jasper should awake, her face was colourless, and a kind of shudder
seemed to come over her. Left alone, she rested her face on, her hand,
her lips moving as if in self-commune. Then noiselessly she glided down
the stairs, regained the street, and hurried fast upon her way.

Bridget was not in time to restore the book to Jasper's pocket, for when
she re-entered he was turning round and stretching himself between
sleep and waking. But she dropped the book skilfully on the floor, close
beside the sofa: it would seem to him, on waking, to have fallen out of
the pocket in the natural movements of sleep.

And, in fact, when he rose, dinner now on the table, he picked up the
pocket-book without suspicion. But it was lucky that Bridget had not
waited for the opportunity suggested by her mistress. For when Jasper
put on the dressing-gown, he observed that his coat wanted brushing;
and, in giving it to the servant for that purpose, he used the
precaution of taking out the pocket-book, and placing it in some other
receptacle of his dress.

Mrs. Crane returned in less than two hours,--returned with a
disappointed look, which at once prepared Jasper for the intelligence
that the birds to be entrapped had flown.

"They went away this afternoon," said Mrs. Crane, tossing Jasper's
sovereigns on the table as if they burned her fingers. "But leave the
fugitives to me. I will find them."

Jasper relieved his angry mind by a series of guilty but meaningless
expletives; and then, seeing