He had been foiled by a woman. He had let her have it all her own way, had given up the stolen property without a murmur or even so much as a feeble attempt to retain possession of it.
This he did not so much regret, for after all it was but the loss of a few trinkets.
He was too great an adept at his art to repine at being baffled in this instance, but he was very much chagrined at being looked down upon by one whom he had considered at an earlier day as an equal if not an inferior.
“She’s done the trick, the saucy jade—done it to rights,” he ejaculated. “How she has managed it is another question. Well, I’m regularly queered, but I suppose I shall never know the rights of it—never.”
He was of course in a terrible bad humour when he returned to his habitation in the Evelina-road, and half regretted not having returned with Bandy-legged Bill, for he would have given almost anything rather than have encountered Mrs. Metcalf.
It was gall and wormwood to him to see her under the circumstances, but it was too late now—he could not recall the past; he had seen her, and the worst was over. He determined upon avoiding such another reincontre.
Peace, as we have intimated more than once, had very little feeling in his whole composition, but he was at times a prey to jealousy, and he was most certainly both jealous and envious in this case—he was envious of Mrs. Metcalf’s superior position.
As far as the woman herself was concerned, he cared perhaps but little about her; but he did not like to be lorded over—he did not like the tone of superiority she assumed, and it is likely enough, under any other circumstances, he would have hurled at her a perfect shower of epithets and virulent abuse. He was, however, unable to do so; upon meeting her in her own house, to use his own expression, he was regularly “floored.”
Upon arriving at his own domicile he at once made for the stables. He found “Tommy” properly stalled, and the valuables he had purloined carefully secreted by the gipsy in the place he had named.
So far all was satisfactory, and after seeing to this he retired to rest.