Meanwhile Jasper formally proposes to Rosa, in the school garden:
standing apart and leaning against a sundial, as the garden is commanded
by many windows. He offers to resign his hopes of bringing Landless to
the gallows (perhaps this bad man would provide a _corpus delicti_ of his
own making!) if Rosa will accept him: he threatens to “pursue her to the
death,” if she will not; he frightens her so thoroughly that she rushes
to Grewgious in his chambers in London. She now suspects Jasper of
Edwin’s murder, but keeps her thoughts to herself. She tells Grewgious,
who is watching Neville,—“I have a fancy for keeping him under my
eye,”—that Jasper has made love to her, and Grewgious replies in a parody
of “God save the King”!
“On Thee his hopes to fix
Damn him again!”
Would he fool thus, if he knew Jasper to have killed Edwin? He is not
certain whether Rosa should visit Helena next day, in Landless’s rooms,
opposite; and Mr. Walters suggests that he may be aware that Helena,
dressed as Datchery, is really absent at Cloisterham. However, next day,
Helena is in her brother’s rooms. Moreover, it is really a sufficient
explanation of Grewgious’s doubt that Jasper is lurking around, and that
not till next day is a _private_ way of communication arranged between
Neville and his friends. In any case, next day, Helena is in her
brother’s rooms, and, by aid of a Mr. Tartar’s rooms, she and Rosa can
meet privately. There is a good deal of conspiring to watch Jasper when
he watches Neville, and in this new friend, Mr. Tartar, a lover is
provided for Rosa. Tartar is a miraculously agile climber over roofs and
up walls, a retired Lieutenant of the navy, and a handy man, being such a
climber, to chase Jasper about the roof of the Cathedral, when Jasper’s
day of doom arrives.