his listener's tastes and habits, the haughty gentleman disburdened himself of at least one of the secrets which he had hitherto guarded from his early friend. But as that secret connects itself with the history of a Person about whom it is well that the reader should now learn more than was known to Darrell himself, we will assume our privilege to be ourselves the narrator, and at the cost of such dramatic vivacity as may belong to dialogue, but with the gain to the reader of clearer insight into those portions of the past which the occasion permits us to reveal—we will weave into something like method the more imperfect and desultory communications by which Guy Darrell added to Alban Morley's distasteful catalogue of painful subjects. 'The reader will allow, perhaps, that we thus evince a desire to gratify his curiosity, when we state, that of Arabella Crane, Darrell spoke but in one brief and angry sentence, and that not by the name in which the reader as yet alone knows her; and it is with the antecedents of Arabella Crane that our explanation will tranquilly commence.
CHAPTER IX.
Grim Arabella Crane.
Once on a time there lived a merchant named Fossett, a widower with three children, of whom a daughter, Arabella, was by some years the eldest. He was much respected, deemed a warm man, and a safe—attended diligently to his business—suffered no partner, no foreman, to dictate or intermeddle—liked his comforts, but made no pretence to fashion. His villa was at Clapham, not a showy but a solid edifice, with lodge, lawn, and gardens, chiefly notable for what is technically called glass—viz., a range of glass-houses on the most improved principles; the heaviest pines, the earliest strawberries. "I'm no judge of flowers,' quoth Mr. Fossett, meekly. 'Give me a plain lawn, provided it be close shaven. But I say to my gardener, 'Forcing is my hobby—a cucumber with my fish all the year round!'"
Yet do not suppose Mr. Fossett ostentatious—quite the reverse. He would no more ruin himself for the sake of dazzling others than he would for the sake of serving them. He liked a warm house, spacious rooms, good living, old wine, for their inherent merits. He cared not to parade them to public envy. When he dined alone, or with a single favored guest, the best Lafitte,
