Page:What will he do with it.djvu/200

190 schools and graduated complexity from "lessons for beginners" to the most arduous gamut of a German oratorio, slunk pathetically a poor lute-harp, the strings long since broken. There, too, by the window, hung a wire bird-cage, the bird long since dead. In a word, round the woman gazing on Jasper Losely, as he complacently drank his brandy, grouped the forlorn tokens of an early state,—the lost golden age of happy girlish studies, of harmless girlish tastes.

"Basta, eno'," said Mr. Losely, pushing aside the glass which he had twice filled and twice drained, "to business. Let me see the child: I feel up to it now."

A darker shade fell over Arabella Crane's face, as she said, "The child! she is not here! I have disposed of her long ago."

"Eh!—disposed of her! what do you mean?"

"Do you ask as if you feared I had put her out of the world? No! Well, then,—you come to England to see the child? You miss—you love, the child of that—of that—" She paused, checked herself, and added in an altered voice, "of that honest, high-minded gentlewoman whose memory must be so dear to me,—you love that child; very natural, Jasper."

"Love her! a child I have scarcely seen since she was born! do talk common-sense. No. But have I not told you that she ought to be money's worth to me; ay, and she shall be yet, despite that proud man's disdainful insolence."

"That proud man! what, you have ventured to address him—visit him—since your return to England?"

"Of course. That's what brought me over. I imagined the man would rejoice at what I told him, open his pursestrings, lavish blessings and bank-notes. And the brute would not even believe me; all because—"

"Because you had sold the right to be believed before. I told you, when I took the child, that you would never succeed there, that—I would never encourage you in the attempt. But you had sold the future as you sold your past,—too cheaply, it seems, Jasper."

"Too cheaply, indeed. Who could ever have supposed that I should have been fobbed off with such a pittance?"

"Who, indeed, Jasper! You were made to spend fortunes, and call them pittances when spent, Jasper! You should have been a prince, Jasper; such princely tastes! Trinkets and dress, horses and dice, and plenty of ladies to look and die! Such princely spirit too! bounding all return for loyal sacrifice to the honour you vouchsafed in accepting it!"