CHAPTER VIII.
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 Crane? 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 he as obdurate to entreaty as he had shown himself to threats. But Jasper was in no humor to entreat. Mechanically he continued to stride on toward 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 leveled 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, death-like soundness, that the policeman passing him on his beat, after one or two vain attempts to rouse him, was seized with a rare compassion, and suffered the weary outcast to slumber on.
When Jasper woke at last in the gray dawn, he felt a strange numbness in his limbs; it was even with difficulty that he could lift himself up. This sensation gradually wearing off, was followed by a quick tingling down the arms to the tips of his fingers. A gloomy noise rang in his ears, like the boom of funeral church-bells; and the pavement seemed to be sliding from under him. Little heeding these symptoms, which he ascribed to cold and want of food, and rather agreeably surprised not to
