“There is not an ungenerous word that I have heard addressed to you—heard with scorn and indignation, Mr. Rokesmith—but it has wounded me far more than you, for I have deserved it, and you never have. Mr. Rokesmith, it is to me you owe this perverted account of what passed between us that night. I parted with the secret, even while I was angry with myself for doing so. It was very bad in me, but indeed it was not wicked. I did it in a moment of conceit and folly—one of my many such moments—one of my many such hours—years. As I am punished for it severely, try to forgive it!”
“I do with all my soul.”
“Thank you. O thank you! Don’t part from me till I have said one other word, to do you justice. The only fault you can be truly charged with, in having spoken to me as you did that night—with how much delicacy and how much forbearance no one but I can know or be grateful to you for—is, that you laid yourself open to be slighted by a worldly shallow girl whose head was turned, and who was quite unable to rise to the worth of what you offered her. Mr. Rokesmith, that girl has often seen herself in a pitiful and poor light since, but never in so pitiful and poor a light as now, when the mean tone in which she answered you—sordid and vain girl that she was—has been echoed in her ears by Mr. Boffin.”
He kissed her hand again.
“Mr. Boffin’s speeches were detestable to me, shocking to me,” said Bella, startling that gentleman with another stamp of her little foot. “It is quite true that there was a time, and very lately, when I deserved to be so ‘righted,’ Mr. Rokesmith; but I hope that I shall never deserve it again!”
He once more put her hand to his lips, and then relinquished it, and left the room. Bella was hurrying back to the chair in which she had hidden her face so long, when, catching sight of Mrs. Boffin by the way, she stopped at her. “He is gone,” sobbed Bella indignantly, despairingly, in fifty ways at once, with her arms round Mrs. Boffin’s neck. “He has been most shamefully abused, and most unjustly and most basely driven away, and I am the cause of it!”
All this time, Mr. Boffin had been rolling his eyes over his loosened neckerchief, as if his fit were still upon him. Appearing now to think that he was coming to, he stared straight before him for a while, tied his neckerchief again, took several long inspirations, swallowed several times, and ultimately exclaimed with a deep sigh, as if he felt himself on the whole better: “Well!”
No word, good or bad, did Mrs. Boffin say; but she tenderly took care of Bella, and glanced at her husband as if for orders. Mr. Boffin, without imparting any, took his seat on a chair over against them, and there sat leaning forward, with a fixed countenance, his legs apart, a hand on each knee, and his elbows squared, until Bella should dry her eyes and raise her head, which in the fullness of time she did.
“I must go home,” said Bella, rising hurriedly. “I am very grateful to you for all you have done for me, but I can’t stay here.”
“My darling girl!” remonstrated Mrs. Boffin.
“No, I can’t stay here,” said Bella; “I can’t indeed.—Ugh! you vicious old thing!” (This to Mr. Boffin.)
“Don’t be rash, my love,” urged Mrs. Boffin. “Think well of what you do.”
“Yes, you had better think well,” said Mr. Boffin.
“I shall never more think well of you,” cried Bella, cutting him short, with intense defiance in her expressive little eyebrows, and championship of the late Secretary in every dimple. “No! Never again! Your money has changed you to marble. You are a hardhearted miser. You are worse than Dancer, worse than Hopkins, worse than Blackberry Jones, worse than any of the wretches. And more!” proceeded Bella, breaking into tears again, “you were wholly undeserving of the gentleman you have lost.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say, Miss Bella,” the Golden Dustman slowly remonstrated, “that you set up Rokesmith against me?”
“I do!” said Bella. “He is worth a million of you.”
Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.
“I would rather he thought well of me,” said Bella, “though he swept the street for bread, than that you did, though you splashed the mud upon him from the wheels of a chariot of pure gold.—There!”
“Well I’m sure!” cried Mr. Boffin, staring.
“And for a long time past, when you have thought you set yourself above him, I have only seen you under his feet,” said Bella—“There! And throughout I saw in him the master, and I saw in you the man—There! And when you used him shamefully, I took his part and loved him—There! I boast of it!”
After which strong avowal Bella underwent reaction, and cried to any extent, with her face on the back of her chair.
“Now, look here,” said Mr. Boffin, as soon as he could find an opening for breaking the silence and striking in. “Give me your attention, Bella. I am not angry.”
“I am!” said Bella.
“I say,” resumed the Golden Dustman, “I am not angry, and I mean kindly to you, and I want to overlook this. So you’ll stay where you are, and we’ll agree to say no more about it.”
“No, I can’t stay here,” cried Bella, rising hurriedly again; “I can’t think of staying here. I must go home for good.”
“Now, don’t be silly,” Mr. Boffin reasoned. “Don’t do what you can’t undo; don’t do what you’re sure to
