furniture gives them quite a comfortable air. She herself has improved
in costume, though her favourite colour still remains iron gray. She
informs Jasper that she fully expected him; that these preparations are
in his honour; that she has engaged a very good cook; that she hopes he
will dine with her when not better engaged; in short, lets him feel
himself at home in Podden Place.

Jasper at first suspected a sinister design, under civilities that his
conscience told him were unmerited,--a design to entrap him into that
matrimonial alliance which he had so ungallantly scouted, and from which
he still recoiled with an abhorrence which man is not justified in
feeling for any connubial partner less preternaturally terrific than the
Witch of Endor or the Bleeding Nun!

But Mrs. Crane quickly and candidly hastened to dispel his ungenerous
apprehensions. She had given up, she said, all ideas so preposterous;
love and wedlock were equally out of her mind. But ill as he had behaved
to her, she could not but feel a sincere regard for him,--a deep interest
in his fate. He ought still to make a brilliant marriage: did that idea
not occur to him? She might help him there with her woman's wit. "In
short," said Mrs. Crane, pinching her lips, "In short, Jasper, I feel for
you as a mother. Look on me as such!"

The pure and affectionate notion wonderfully tickled and egregiously
delighted Jasper Losely. "Look on you as a mother! I will," said he,
with emphasis. "Best of creatures!" And though in his own mind he had
not a doubt that she still adored him (not as a mother), he believed it
was a disinterested, devoted adoration, such as the beautiful brute
really had inspired more than once in his abominable life. Accordingly,
he moved into the neighbourhood of Podden Place, contenting himself with