and in a few moments more Guy Darrell himself came out from the copse,
close by the gate, and opening it quickly, stood face to face with his
abhorrent son-in-law. Jasper was startled, but the opportunity was not
to be lost. "Mr. Darrell," he said, "I come here again to see you;
vouchsafe me, this time, a calmer hearing." So changed was Losely, so
absorbed in his own emotions Darrell, that the words did not at once
waken up remembrance. "Another time," said Darrell, hastily moving on
into the road; "I am not at leisure now." "Pardon me, NOW," said Losely,
unconsciously bringing himself back to the tones and bearing of his
earlier and more civilised years. "You do not remember me, sir; no
wonder. But my name is Jasper Losely."

Darrell halted; then, as if spellbound, looked fixedly at the broad-
shouldered burly frame before him, cased in its coarse pea-jacket, and in
that rude form, and that defeatured, bloated face, detected, though with
strong effort, the wrecks of the masculine beauty which had ensnared his
deceitful daughter. Jasper could not have selected a more unpropitious
moment for his cause. Darrell was still too much under the influence of
recent excitement and immense sorrow for that supremacy of prudence over
passion which could alone have made him a willing listener to overtures
from Jasper Losely. And about the man whose connection with himself was
a thought of such bitter shame, there was now so unmistakably the air of
settled degradation, that all Darrell's instincts of gentleman were
revolted--just at the very time, too, when his pride had been most chafed
and assailed by the obtrusion of all that rendered most galling to him
the very name of Jasper Losely. What! Was it that man's asserted child
whom Lionel Haughton desired as a wife?--was the alliance with that man
to be thus renewed and strengthened?--that man have another claim to him
and his in right of parentage to the bride of his nearest kinsman? What!
was it that man's child whom he was asked to recognise as of his own