Jasper Losely returns not, neither to Podden place or his lodging in the neighborhood. Days elapse and still he comes not; even Poole does not know where he has gone; even Poole has not seen him! But that worthy is now laid up with a serious rheumatic fever--confined to his room and a water gruel. And Jasper Losely is not the man to intrude himself on the privacy of a sick chamber. Mrs. Crane, more benevolent, visits Poole cheers him up--gets him a nurse--writes to Uncle Sam. Poole blesses her. He hopes that Uncle Sam, moved by the spectacle of the sick-bed will say, “Don’t let your debts fret you: I will pay them!” Whatever her disappointment or resentment at Jasper’s thankless and mysterious evasion, Arabella Crane is calmly confident of his return. To her servant, Bridget Greggs, who was perhaps the sole person in the world who entertained affection for the lone gaunt woman, and who held Jasper Losely in profound detestation, she said, with tranquil sternness, “That man has crossed my life, and darkened it. He passed away, and left Night behind him. He has dared to return. He shall never escape me again till the grave yawn for one of us.” “But, Lor’ love you, miss, you would not put yourself in the power of such a black-hearted villing?” “In his power! No, Bridget; fear not, he must be in mine, sooner or later in mine, hand and foot. Patience!” As she was thus speaking,--a knock at the door! “It is he; I told you so; quick!” But it was not Jasper Losely. It was Mr. Rugge. CHAPTER XV. “When God wills, all winds bring rain.”--Ancient Proverb. The manager had not submitted to the loss of his property in Sophy and L100 without taking much vain trouble to recover the one or the other. He had visited Jasper while that gentleman lodged in St. James’s; but the moment he hinted at the return of the L100, Mr. Losely opened both door and window, and requested the manager to make his immediate choice of the two. Taking the more usual mode of exit, Mr. Rugge vented his just indignation in a lawyer’s letter, threatening Mr. Losely with an action for conspiracy and fraud. He had also more than once visited Mrs. Crane, who somewhat soothed him by allowing that he had been very badly used, that he ought at least to be repaid his money, and promising to do her best to persuade Mr. Losely “to behave like a gentleman.” With regard to Sophy herself, Mrs. Crane appeared to feel a profound indifference. In fact, the hatred which Mrs. Crane had unquestionably conceived for Sophy while under her charge was much diminished by Losely’s unnatural conduct towards the child. To her it was probably a matter of no interest whether Sophy was in Rugge’s hands or Waife’s; enough for her that the daughter of a woman against whose memory her fiercest passions were enlisted was, in either case, so far below herself in the grades of the social ladder.