Page:What will he do with it.djvu/207

Rh the street door. Rugge went out first; the woman detained Losely.

"Do you find her altered?"

"Whom? Mrs. Crane?—why, years will tell. But you seem to have known me; I don't remember you."

"Not Bridget Greggs?"

"Is it possible? I left you a middle-aged, rosy-faced woman. True, I recognize you now. There's a crown for you. I wish I had more to spare!"

Bridget pushed back the silver.

"No; I dare not! Take money from you, Jasper Losely! Mistress would not forgive me!"

Losely, not unreluctantly, restored the crown to his pocket; and, with a snort rather than sigh of relief, stepped into open daylight. As he crossed the street to join Rugge, who was waiting for him on the shady side, he mechanically turned to look back at the house, and, at the open window of an upper story, he beheld again those shining eyes which had glared down on him from the stairs. He tried to smile, and waved his hand feebly. The eyes seemed to return the smile; and as he walked down the street, arm-in-arm with the ruffian manager, slowly recovering his springy step, and in the gloss of the new garments that set forth his still symmetrical proportions, the eyes followed him watchfully, steadfastly, till his form had vanished, and the dull street was once more a solitude.

Then Arabella Crane turned from the window. Putting her hand to her heart, "How it beats!" she muttered; "if in love or in hate, in scorn or in pity, beats once more with a human emotion. He will come again; whether for money or for woman's wit, what care I?—he will come. I will hold, I will cling to him, no more to part; for better for worse, as it should have been once at the altar. And the child?" she paused; was it in compunction? "The child!" she continued fiercely, and as if lashing herself into rage, "the child of that treacherous, hateful mother,—yes! I will help him to sell her back as a stage-show,—help him in all that does not lift her to a state from which she may look down with disdain on me. Revenge on her, on that cruel house: revenge is sweet. Oh! that it were revenge alone that bids me cling to him who deserves revenge the most." She closed her burning eyes, and sat down droopingly, rocking herself to and fro like one in pain.