was sitting in the same room; and Arabella Crane felt that, if that
existence could continue, she could forget the past and look contented
towards the future. Again I say, strange creature is woman; and in this
instance, creature more strange, because so grim! But as her eyes
soften, and her fingers work, and her mind revolves schemes for making
that lawless wild beast an innocuous tame 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