clasped in each other, her head leaning on his young shoulder, her tears
kissed so soothingly away, and soft words of kindly motherly counsel,
sweet promises of filial performances. Happy, thrice happy, as an after
remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent
at the foot of that mystic bridge, which starts from the threshold of
home,--lost in the dimness of the far-opposing shore!--bridge over which
goes the boy who will never return but as the man.




CHAPTER XII.

The pocket-cannibal baits his woman's trap with love-letters, and a
widow allured steals timidly towards it from under the weeds.

Jasper Losely is beginning to be hard up! The infallible calculation at
rouge-et-noir has carried off all that capital which had accumulated from
the savings of the young gentlemen whom Dolly Poole had contributed to
his exchequer. Poole himself is beset by duns, and pathetically observes
"that he has lost three stone in weight, and that he believes the calves
to his legs are gone to enlarge his liver."

Jasper is compelled to put down his cabriolet, to discharge his groom,
to retire from his fashionable lodgings; and just when the prospect even
of a dinner becomes dim, he bethinks himself of Arabella Crane, and
remembers that she promised him L5, nay L10, which are still due from
her. He calls; he is received like the prodigal son. Nay, to his own
surprise, he finds Mrs. Crane has made her house much more inviting: the
drawing-rooms are cleaned up; the addition of a few easy articles of