explanation, in this quarter, and that, and the other, with which it would load him, he avoided the awkwardness, and took to flight?”
“Such a thing might be,” said Mr. Grewgious, pondering.
“Such a thing has been. I have read of cases in which people, rather than face a seven days’ wonder, and have to account for themselves to the idle and impertinent, have taken themselves away, and been long unheard of.”
“I believe such things have happened,” said Mr. Grewgious, pondering still.
“When I had, and could have, no suspicion,” pursued Jasper, eagerly following the new track, “that the dear lost boy had withheld anything from me—most of all, such a leading matter as this—what gleam of light was there for me in the whole black sky? When I supposed that his intended wife was here, and his marriage close at hand, how could I entertain the possibility of his voluntarily leaving this place, in a manner that would be so unaccountable, capricious, and cruel? But now that I know what you have told me, is there no little chink through which day pierces? Supposing him to have disappeared of his own act, is not his disappearance more accountable and less cruel? The fact of his having just parted from your ward, is in itself a sort of reason for his going away. It does not make his mysterious departure the less cruel to me, it is true; but it relieves it of cruelty to her.”
Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this.
“And even as to me,” continued Jasper, still pursuing the new track, with ardour, and, as he did so, brightening with hope: “he knew that you were coming to me; he knew that you were entrusted to tell me what you have told me; if your doing so has awakened a new train of thought in my perplexed mind, it reasonably follows that, from the same premises, he