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476 so luridly welcomed him to Poddon Place. But though he did not even condescend to write to her in the mean while, it is probable that Arabella contrived to learn more of his habits and mode of life at Paris than she intimated when they once more met face to face.

And now the reader knows more than Alban Morley, or Guy Darrell perhaps ever will know, of the grim woman in iron-gray.

Sweet are the uses of Adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Bears yet a precious jewel in its head."

Never did I know a man who was an habitual gambler, otherwise than notably inaccurate in his calculations of probabilities in the ordinary affairs of life. Is it that such a man has become so chronic a drunkard of hope, that he sees double every chance in his favor?

Jasper Losely had counted upon two things as matters of course.

1st. Darrell's speedy reconciliation with his only child.

2d. That Darrell's only child must of necessity be Darrell's heiress.

In both these expectations the gambler was deceived.

Darrell did not even answer the letters that Matilda addressed to him from France, to the shores of which Jasper had borne her, and where he had hastened to make her his wife under his assumed name of Hammond, but his true Christian name of Jasper.

In the disreputable marriage Matilda had made, all the worst