erest bonds of friendship,
but after Jasper had so rudely declined the hand which now fed him,
Arabella Crane had probably perceived that her sole chance of retaining
intellectual power over his lawless being necessitated the utter
relinquishment of every hope or project that could expose her again to
his contempt. Suiting appearances to reality, the decorum of a separate
house was essential to the maintenance of that authority with which
the rigid nature of their intercourse invested her. The additional cost
strained her pecuniary resources, but she saved in her own accommodation
in order to leave Jasper no cause to complain of any stinting in his.
There, then, she sat by her window, herself unseen, eying him in his
opposite solitude, accepting for her own life a barren sacrifice, but
a jealous sentinel on his. Meditating as she sat and as she eyed
him,--meditating what employment she could invent, with the bribe of
emoluments to be paid furtively by her, for those strong hands that
could have felled an ox, but were nerveless in turning an honest penny,
and for that restless mind hungering for occupation, and with the
digestion of an ostrich for dice and debauch, riot and fraud, but queasy
as an exhausted dyspeptic at the reception of one innocent amusement,
one honourable toil. But while that woman still schemes how to rescue
from hulks or halter that execrable man, who shall say that he is
without a chance? A chance he has: WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

Envy will be a science when it learns the use of the microscope.

When leaves fall and flowers fade, great people are found in their
country-seats. Look!--that is Montfort Court,--a place of regal
magnificence, so far as extent of pile and amplitude of domain could
satisfy the pride of ownership, or inspire the visitor with the respect
due to wealth and power. An artist could have made nothing of it. The
Sumptuous everywhere; the Picturesque nowhere. The house was built
in the reign of George I., when first commenced that horror of the
beautiful, as something in bad taste, which, agreeably to our natural
love of progress, progressively advanced through the reigns of
succeeding Georges. An enormous fafade, in dull brown brick; two wings
and a centre, with double flights of steps to the hall-door from the
carriage-sweep. No trees allowed to grow too near the house; in front, a
stately flat with stone balustrades. But wherever the eye