face addressed to Mr Bounderby, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd, half perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very difficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip; his right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very earnestly emphasizing what he said: not least so when it always paused, a little bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.

‘I was acquainted with all this, you know,’ said Mr Bounderby, ‘except the last clause, long ago. It’s a bad job; that’s what it is. You had better have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married. However, it’s too late to say that.’

‘Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?’ asked Mrs Sparsit.

‘You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of years, this unlucky job of yours?’ said Mr Bounderby.

‘Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.’

‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mrs Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. ‘I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an unequal one in point of years.’

Mr Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a sidelong way that had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little more sherry.

‘Well? Why don’t you go on?’ he then asked, turning rather irritably on Stephen Blackpool.

‘I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.’ Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. Mrs Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having received a moral shock.

‘What do you mean?’ said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the chimney-piece. ‘What are you talking about? You took her for better for worse.’

‘I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear’t nommore. I ha’ lived under’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’ best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone hottering mad.’

‘He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir,’ observed Mrs Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality of the people.

‘I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming to ’t. I ha’ read i’ th’ papers that great folk (fair faw ’em a’! I wishes ’em no hurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that they can be set free fro’ their misfortnet marriages, an’ marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o’ one kind an another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok ha’ only one room, and we can’t. When that won’t do, they ha’ gowd an other cash, an’ they can say ‘‘This for yo’ an that for me,’’ an they can go their separate ways. We can’t. Spite o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I mun’ be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know how?’

‘No how,’ returned Mr Bounderby.

‘If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me?’

‘Of course there is.’

‘If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me?’

‘Of course there is.’