finally broken with those miscreant comrades, and had never again been
seen in their haunts. As Arabella had introduced herself to Alban by her
former name, and neither he nor Darrell was acquainted with that she now
bore, and as no questions on the subject could be put to Waife during the
earlier stages of his illness, so it was several days before the Colonel
had succeeded in tracing her out as Mrs. Crane of Podden Place--a
discovery effected by a distant relation to whom he had been referred at
the famous school of which Arabella had been the pride, and who was no
doubt the owner of those sheepskin account-books by which the poor grim
woman had once vainly sought to bribe Jasper into honest work. But the
house in Podden Place was shut up--not a soul in charge of it. The
houses immediately adjoining it were tenantless. The Colonel learned,
however, from a female servant in an opposite house, that several days
ago she had seen a tall, powerful-looking man enter Mrs. Crane's street-
door; that she had not seen him quit it; and that some evenings
afterwards, as this servant was closing up the house in which she served,
she had remarked a large private carriage driving away from Mrs. Crane's
door; that it was too dark to see who were in the carriage, but she had
noticed a woman whom she felt fully sure was Mrs. Crane's servant,
Bridgett Greggs, on the box beside the coachman.

Alban had been to the agent employed by Mrs. Crane in the letting of her
houses, but had not there gained any information. The Colonel believed
that Mrs. Crane had succeeded in removing Jasper from London--had,
perhaps, accompanied him abroad. If with her, at all events for the
present he was safe from the stings of want, and with one who had sworn
to save him from his own guilty self. If, however, still in England,
Alban had no doubt, sooner or later, to hunt him up.

Upon the whole, this conjectural information, though unsatisfactory,