nence of the perils from which he had so narrowly escaped—hence the utterness of his present destitution. But man, however vile, whatever his peril, whatever his destitution, was born free, and loves liberty. Liberty to go to Satan in his own way was to Jasper Losely a supreme blessing compared to that benignant compassionate espionage, with its relentless eye and restraining hand. Alas and alas! deem not this perversity unnatural in that headstrong self-destroyer! How many are there whom not a grim hard-featured Arabella Crane, but the long-suffering, divine, omniscient, gentle Providence itself, seeks to warn, to aid, to save—and is shunned, and loathed, and fled from, as if it were an evil genius! How many are there who fear nothing so much as the being made good in spite of themselves?—how many?—who can count them?
CHAPTER VII.
The public man needs but one patron—viz., THE LUCKY MOMENT.
"At his house in Carlton Gardens, Guy Darrell, Esq., for the season."
Simple insertion in the pompous list of Fashionable Arrivals!—the name of a plain commoner imbedded in the amber which glitters with so many coronets and stars! Yet such is England, with all its veneration for titles, that the eyes of the public passed indifferently over the rest of that chronicle of illustrious "where-abouts," to rest with interest, curiosity, speculation, on the unemblazoned name which but a day before had seemed slipped out of date—obsolete as that of an actor who figures no more in playbills. Unquestionably the sensation excited was due, in much, to the "ambiguous voices" which Colonel Morley had disseminated throughout the, genial atmosphere of Club-rooms. "Arrived in London for the season!" he, the orator, once so famous, long so forgotten, who had been out of the London world for the space of more than half a generation. "Why now? why for the season?" quoth the Colonel. "He is still in the prime of life as a public man, and—a crisis is at hand!"
But that which gave weight and significance to Alban Morley's hints, was the report in the newspapers of Guy Darrell's visit to his old constituents, and of the short speech he had addressed to them, to which he had so slightly referred in his conversation with Alban. True, the speech was short: true, it touched but
