Nay, indeed, so dressed, in that villanous pea-jacket, and with all other habiliments to match, would any servant admit him?--could he get into Lady Montfort's presence? He must go back--wait for Mrs. Crane's return. Doubtless she would hail his wish--half a reform in itself--to castoff the outward signs of an accepted degradation. Accordingly he went back to town in much better spirits, and so absorbed in his hopes, that, when he arrived at Podden Place, he did not observe that, from some obliquity of vision, or want of the normal correspondence between will and muscle, his hand twice missed the knocker-wandering first above, then below it; and that, when actually in his clasp, he did not feel the solid iron: the sense of touch seemed suspended. Bridgett appeared. "Mistress is come back, and will see you." Jasper did not look charmed; he winced, but screwed up his courage, and mounted the stairs--slowly-heavily. Form the landing-place above glared down the dark shining eyes that had almost quailed his bold spirit nearly six years before; and almost in the same words as then, a voice as exulting, but less stern, said: "So you come at last to me, Jasper Losely--you are come." Rapidly-flittingly, with a step noiseless as a spectre's, Arabella Crane descended the stairs; but she did not, as when he first sought that house in the years before, grasp his hand or gaze into his face. Rather, it was with a shrinking avoidance of his touch-- with something like a shudder-that she glided by him into the open drawing-room, beckoning him to follow. He halted a moment; he felt a longing to retreat--to fly the house; his superstitious awe of her very benefits came back to him more strongly than ever. But her help at the moment was necessary to his very hope to escape all future need of her, and, though with a vague foreboding of unconjecturable evil, he stepped into the room, and the door closed on both.