“Attract, sir?” said Bella, again with her eyebrows raised, and her eyelids drooping. “I don’t understand you.”
Without replying on this point, Mr. Rokesmith went on.
“Excuse me; when I first saw you in your black dress—”
(“There!” was Miss Bella’s mental exclamation. “What did I say to them at home? Everybody noticed that ridiculous mourning.”)
“When I first saw you in your black dress, I was at a loss to account for that distinction between yourself and your family. I hope it was not impertinent to speculate upon it?”
“I hope not, I am sure,” said Miss Bella, haughtily. “But you ought to know best how you speculated upon it.”
Mr. Rokesmith inclined his head in a deprecatory manner, and went on.
“Since I have been entrusted with Mr. Boffin’s affairs, I have necessarily come to understand the little mystery. I venture to remark that I feel persuaded that much of your loss may be repaired. I speak, of course, merely of wealth, Miss Wilfer. The loss of a perfect stranger, whose worth, or worthlessness, I cannot estimate—nor you either—is beside the question. But this excellent gentleman and lady are so full of simplicity, so full of generosity, so inclined towards you, and so desirous to—how shall I express it?—to make amends for their good fortune, that you have only to respond.”
As he watched her with another covert look, he saw a certain ambitious triumph in her face which no assumed coldness could conceal.
“As we have been brought under one roof by an accidental combination of circumstances, which oddly extends itself to the new relations before us, I have taken the liberty of saying these few words. You don’t consider them intrusive I hope?” said the Secretary with deference.
“Really, Mr. Rokesmith, I can’t say what I consider them,” returned the young lady. “They are perfectly new to me, and may be founded altogether on your own imagination.”
“You will see.”
These same fields were opposite the Wilfer premises. The discreet Mrs. Wilfer now looking out of window and beholding her daughter in conference with her lodger, instantly tied up her head and came out for a casual walk.
“I have been telling Miss Wilfer,” said John Rokesmith, as the majestic lady came stalking up, “that I have become, by a curious chance, Mr. Boffin’s Secretary or man of business.”
“I have not,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, waving her gloves in her chronic state of dignity, and vague ill-usage, “the honour of any intimate acquaintance with Mr. Boffin, and it is not for me to congratulate that gentleman on the acquisition he has made.”
“A poor one enough,” said Rokesmith.
“Pardon me,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, “the merits of Mr. Boffin may be highly distinguished—may be more distinguished than the countenance of Mrs. Boffin would imply—but it were the insanity of humility to deem him worthy of a better assistant.”
“You are very good. I have also been telling Miss Wilfer that she is expected very shortly at the new residence in town.”
“Having tacitly consented,” said Mrs. Wilfer, with a grand shrug of her shoulders, and another wave of her gloves, “to my child’s acceptance of the proffered attentions of Mrs. Boffin, I interpose no objection.”
Here Miss Bella offered the remonstrance: “Don’t talk nonsense, ma, please.”
“Peace!” said Mrs. Wilfer.
“No, ma, I am not going to be made so absurd. Interposing objections!”
“I say,” repeated Mrs. Wilfer, with a vast access of grandeur, “that I am not going to interpose objections. If Mrs. Boffin (to whose countenance no disciple of Lavater could possibly for a single moment subscribe),” with a shiver, “seeks to illuminate her new residence in town with the attractions of a child of mine, I am content that she should be favoured by the company of a child of mine.”
“You use the word, ma’am, I have myself used,” said Rokesmith, with a glance at Bella, “when you speak of Miss Wilfer’s attractions there.”
“Pardon me,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, with dreadful solemnity, “but I had not finished.”
“Pray excuse me.”
“I was about to say,” pursued Mrs. Wilfer, who clearly had not had the faintest idea of saying anything more: “that when I use the term attractions, I do so with the qualification that I do not mean it in any way whatever.”
The excellent lady delivered this luminous elucidation of her views with an air of greatly obliging her hearers, and greatly distinguishing herself. Whereat Miss Bella laughed a scornful little laugh and said:
“Quite enough about this, I am sure, on all sides. Have the goodness, Mr. Rokesmith, to give my love to Mrs. Boffin—”
“Pardon me!” cried Mrs. Wilfer. “Compliments.”
“Love!” repeated Bella, with a little stamp of her foot.
“No!” said Mrs. Wilfer, monotonously. “Compliments.”
(“Say Miss Wilfer’s love, and Mrs. Wilfer’s compliments,” the Secretary proposed, as a compromise.)
“And I shall be very glad to come when she is ready for me. The sooner, the better.”
“One last word, Bella,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “before descending to the family apartment. I trust that as a child of mine you will ever be sensible that it will be graceful in you, when associating with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin upon equal terms, to remember that the Secretary, Mr. Rokesmith, as your father’s lodger, has a claim on your good word.”
The condescension with which Mrs. Wilfer delivered this proclamation of patronage, was as wonderful as the swiftness with which the lodger had lost caste in the Secretary. He smiled as the mother retired downstairs; but his face fell, as the daughter followed.
“So insolent, so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so hard to touch, so hard to turn!” he said, bitterly.
And added as he went upstairs. “And yet so pretty, so pretty!”
And added presently, as he walked to and fro in his room. “And if she knew!”
She knew that he was shaking the house by his walking to and fro; and she declared it another of the miseries of
