and yellow leaf, sir; but I have still in this withered bosom the heart
of a Briton!"

"Warm it, Mr. Rugge. Help yourself to the brandy--and the lady too."

"Sir, you are a gentleman; sir, your health. Hag, drink better days to
us both. That woman, sir, is a hag, but she is an honour to her sex-
faithful!"

"It is astonishing how faithful ladies are when not what is called
beautiful. I speak from painful experience," said Losely, growing
debonnair as the liquor relaxed his gloom, and regaining that levity of
tongue which sometimes strayed into wit, and which-springing originally
from animal spirits and redundant health--still came to him mechanically
whenever roused by companionship from alternate intervals of lethargy and
pain. "But, now, Mr. Rugge, I am all ears; perhaps you will be kind
enough to be all tale."

With tragic aspect, unrelaxed by that /jeu de mots/, and still wholly
unrecognising in the massive form and discoloured swollen countenance of
the rough-clad stranger, the elegant proportions, the healthful,
blooming, showy face, and elaborate fopperies of the Jasper Losely who
had sold to him a Phenomenon which proved so evanishing, Rugge entered
into a prolix history of his wrongs at the hands of Waife, of Losely, of
Sophy. Only of Mrs. Crane did he speak with respect; and Jasper then for
the first time learned--and rather with anger for the interference than
gratitude for the generosity--that she had repaid the L100, and thereby
cancelled Rugge's claim upon the child. The ex-manager then proceeded to
the narrative of his subsequent misfortunes--all of which he laid to the
charge of Waife and the Phenomenon. "Sir," said he, "I was ambitious.