then shifts his posture, snubs his connubial angel, who asks "what ails
him?" refills his glass, and stares on the fire, seeing strange shapes in
the mobile aspects of the coals.

To-morrow brings back this weekly spectre! To-morrow Jasper Losely,
punctual to the stroke of eleven, returns to remind him of that past
which, if revealed, will blast the future. And revealed it might be any
hour despite the bribe for silence which he must pay with his own hands,
under his own roof. Would he trust another with the secret of that
payment?--horror! Would he visit Losely at his own lodging, and pay him
there?--murder! Would he appoint him somewhere in the streets--run the
chance of being seen with such a friend? Respectability confabulating
with offal?--disgrace! And Jasper had on the last two or three visits
been peculiarly disagreeable. He had talked loud. Poole feared that his
wife might have her ear at the keyhole. Jasper had seen the parlour-maid
in the passage as he went out, and caught her round the waist. The
parlour-maid had complained to Mrs. Poole, and said she would leave if so
insulted by such an ugly blackguard. Alas! what the poor lady-killer has
come to! Mrs. Poole had grown more and more inquisitive and troublesome
on the subject of such extraordinary visits; and now, as her husband
stirred the fire-having roused her secret ire by his previous unmanly
snubbings, and Mrs. Poole being one of those incomparable wives who have
a perfect command of temper, who never reply to angry words at the
moment, and who always, with exquisite calm and self-possession, pay off
every angry word by an amiable sting at a right moment--Mrs. Poole, I
say, thus softly said:

"Sammy, duck, we know what makes oo so cross; but it shan't vex oo long,
Sammy. That dreadful man comes to-morrow. He always comes the same day
of the week."