“I shall never be sorry for it,” said Bella; “and I should always be sorry, and should every minute of my life despise myself if I remained here after what has happened.”
“At least, Bella,” argued Mr. Boffin, “let there be no mistake about it. Look before you leap, you know. Stay where you are, and all’s well, and all’s as it was to be. Go away, and you can never come back.”
“I know that I can never come back, and that’s what I mean,” said Bella.
“You mustn’t expect,” Mr. Boffin pursued, “that I’m a-going to settle money on you, if you leave us like this, because I am not. No, Bella! Be careful! Not one brass farthing.”
“Expect!” said Bella, haughtily. “Do you think that any power on earth could make me take it, if you did, sir?”
But there was Mrs. Boffin to part from, and, in the full flush of her dignity, the impressible little soul collapsed again. Down upon her knees before that good woman, she rocked herself upon her breast, and cried, and sobbed, and folded her in her arms with all her might.
“You’re a dear, a dear, the best of dears!” cried Bella. “You’re the best of human creatures. I can never be thankful enough to you, and I can never forget you. If I should live to be blind and deaf I know I shall see and hear you, in my fancy, to the last of my dim old days!”
Mrs. Boffin wept most heartily, and embraced her with all fondness; but said not one single word except that she was her dear girl. She said that often enough, to be sure, for she said it over and over again; but not one word else.
Bella broke from her at length, and was going weeping out of the room, when in her own little queer affectionate way, she half relented towards Mr. Boffin.
“I am very glad,” sobbed Bella, “that I called you names, sir, because you richly deserved it. But I am very sorry that I called you names, because you used to be so different. Say goodbye!”
“Goodbye,” said Mr. Boffin, shortly.
“If I knew which of your hands was the least spoilt, I would ask you to let me touch it,” said Bella, “for the last time. But not because I repent of what I have said to you. For I don’t. It’s true!”
“Try the left hand,” said Mr. Boffin, holding it out in a stolid manner; “it’s the least used.”
“You have been wonderfully good and kind to me,” said Bella, “and I kiss it for that. You have been as bad as bad could be to Mr. Rokesmith, and I throw it away for that. Thank you for myself, and goodbye!”
“Goodbye,” said Mr. Boffin as before.
Bella caught him round the neck and kissed him, and ran out forever.
She ran upstairs, and sat down on the floor in her own room, and cried abundantly. But the day was declining and she had no time to lose. She opened all the places where she kept her dresses; selected only those she had brought with her, leaving all the rest; and made a great misshapen bundle of them, to be sent for afterwards.
“I won’t take one of the others,” said Bella, tying the knots of the bundle very tight, in the severity of her resolution. “I’ll leave all the presents behind, and begin again entirely on my own account.” That the resolution might be thoroughly carried into practice, she even changed the dress she wore, for that in which she had come to the grand mansion. Even the bonnet she put on, was the bonnet that had mounted into the Boffin chariot at Holloway.
“Now, I am complete,” said Bella. “It’s a little trying, but I have steeped my eyes in cold water, and I won’t cry any more. You have been a pleasant room to me, dear room. Adieu! We shall never see each other again.”
With a parting kiss of her fingers to it, she softly closed the door and went with a light foot down the great staircase, pausing and listening as she went, that she might meet none of the household. No one chanced to be about, and she got down to the hall in quiet. The door of the late Secretary’s room stood open. She peeped in as she passed, and divined from the emptiness of his table, and the general appearance of things, that he was already gone. Softly opening the great hall door, and softly closing it upon herself, she turned and kissed it on the outside—insensible old combination of wood and iron that it was!—before she ran away from the house at a swift pace.
“That was well done!” panted Bella, slackening in the next street, and subsiding into a walk. “If I had left myself any breath to cry with, I should have cried again. Now poor dear darling little Pa, you are going to see your lovely woman unexpectedly.”
XVI
The Feast of the Three Hobgoblins
The City looked unpromising enough, as Bella made her way along its gritty streets. Most of its money-mills were slackening sail, or had left off grinding for the day. The master-millers had already departed, and the journeymen were departing. There was a jaded aspect on the business lanes and courts, and the very pavements had a weary appearance, confused by the tread of a million of feet. There must be hours of night to temper down the day’s distraction of so feverish a place. As yet the worry of the newly-stopped whirling and grinding on the part of the money-mills seemed to linger in the air, and the quiet was more like the prostration of a spent giant than the repose of one who was renewing his strength.
If Bella thought, as she glanced at the mighty Bank, how agreeable it would be to have an hour’s gardening there, with a bright copper shovel, among the money, still she was not in an avaricious
