Crane ended with these ominous words: "It is right to say now that he has
descended deeper and deeper. Could you see him, you would wonder that I
neither abandon him nor my resolve. He hates me worse than the gibbet.
To me and not to the gibbet he shall pass--fitting punishment to both.
I am in London, not in my old house, but near him. His confidant is my
hireling. His life and his projects are clear to my eyes--clear as if he
dwelt in glass. Sophy is now of an age in which, were she placed in the
care of some person whose respectability could not be impunged, she could
not be legally forced away against her will; but if under your roof,
those whom Jasper has induced to institute a search, that he has no means
to institute very actively himself, might make statements which (as you
are already aware) might persuade others, though well-meaning, to assist
him in separating her from you. He might publicly face even a police-
court, if he thus hoped to shame the rich man into buying off an
intolerable scandal. He might, in the first instance, and more probably,
decoy her into his power through stealth; and what might become of her
before she was recovered? Separate yourself from her for a time. It is
you, notwithstanding your arts of disguise, that can be the more easily
tracked. She, now almost a woman, will have grown out of recognition.
Place her in some secure asylum until, at least, you hear from me again."

Waife read and re-read this epistle (to which there was no direction that
enabled him to reply) in the private room of a little coffee-house to
which he had retired from the gaze and pressure of the street. The
determination he had long brooded over now began to take shape--to be
hurried on to prompt decision. On recovering his first shock, he formed
and matured his plans. That same evening he saw Lady Montfort. He felt
that the time had come when, for Sophy's sake, he must lift the veil from
the obloquy on his own name. To guard against the same concession to
Jasper's authority that had betrayed her at Gatesboro', it was necessary