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"A wonderful fellow, indeed!" muttered Cutts, as his eye followed the receding form of the triumphant bravo. "All London might look to itself, if he had more solid brains, and less liquid fire in them."

CHAPTER VIII.

JASPER LOSELY SLEEPS UNDER THE PORTICO FROM WHICH FALSEHOOD WAS BORNE BY BLACK HORSES. HE FORGETS A PROMISE, REWEAVES A SCHEME, VISITS A RIVER-SIDE, AND A DOOR CLOSES ON THE STRONG MAN AND THE GRIM WOMAN.

Jasper, had satisfied the wild yearnings of his wounded vanity. He had vindicated his claim to hardihood and address, which it seemed to him he had forfeited in his interview with Darrell. With crest erect and a positive sense of elation, of animal joy that predominated over hunger, fatigue, remorse, he strided on--he knew not whither. He would not go back to his former lodgings; they were too familiarly known to the set which he had just flung from him, with a vague resolve to abjure henceforth all accomplices, and trust to himself alone. The hour was now late--the streets deserted--the air bitingly cold. Must he at last resign himself to the loathed dictation of Arabella Cram? Well, he now preferred even that to humbling himself to Darrell, after what had passed. Darrell's parting words had certainly implied that he would not be as obdurate to entreaty as he had shown himself to threats. But Jasper was in no humour to entreat. Mechanically he continued to stride on towards the solitary district in which Arabella held her home; but the night was now so far advanced that he shrunk from disturbing the grim woman at that hour--almost as respectfully afraid of her dark eye and stern voice as the outlaws he had quitted were of his own crushing hand and levelled pistol. So finding himself in one of the large squares of Bloomsbury, he gathered himself up under the sheltering porch of a spacious mansion, unconscious that it was the very residence which Darrell had once occupied, and that from that portico the Black Horses had borne away the mother of his wife. In a few minutes he was fast asleep--sleeping with such heavy deathlike soundness, that the policeman passing him on his beat, after one or two vain