“But I have asked him to forgive me since,” cried Bella; “and I would ask him to forgive me now again, upon my knees, if it would spare him!”

Here Mrs. Boffin broke out a-crying.

“Old lady,” said Mr. Boffin, “stop that noise! Tender-hearted in you, Miss Bella; but I mean to have it out right through with this young man, having got him into a corner. Now, you Rokesmith. I tell you that’s one side of your conduct — Insolence and Presumption. Now, I’m a-coming to the other, which is much worse. This was a speculation of yours.”

“I indignantly deny it.”

“It’s of no use your denying it; it doesn’t signify a bit whether you deny it or not; I’ve got a head upon my shoulders, and it ain’t a baby’s. What!” said Mr. Boffin, gathering himself together in his most suspicious attitude, and wrinkling his face into a very map of curves and corners. “Don’t I know what grabs are made at a man with money? If I didn’t keep my eyes open, and my pockets buttoned, shouldn’t I be brought to the workhouse before I knew where I was? Wasn’t the experience of Dancer, and Elwes, and Hopkins, and Blewbury Jones, and ever so many more of ’em, similar to mine? Didn’t everybody want to make grabs at what they’d got, and bring ’em to poverty and ruin? Weren’t they forced to hide everything belonging to ’em, for fear it should be snatched from ’em? Of course they was. I shall be told next that they didn’t know human natur!”

“They! Poor creatures,” murmured the Secretary.

“What do you say?” asked Mr. Boffin, snapping at him. “However, you needn’t be at the trouble of repeating it, for it ain’t worth hearing, and won’t go down with me. I’m a-going to unfold your plan, before this young lady; I’m a-going to show this young lady the second view of you; and nothing you can say will stave it off. (Now, attend here, Bella, my dear.) Rokesmith, you’re a needy chap. You’re a chap that I pick up in the street. Are you, or ain’t you?”

“Go on, Mr. Boffin; don’t appeal to me.”

“Not appeal to you,” retorted Mr. Boffin as if he hadn’t done so. “No, I should hope not! Appealing to you, would be rather a rum course. As I was saying, you’re a needy chap that I pick up in the street. You come and ask me in the street to take you for a Secretary, and I take you. Very good.”

“Very bad,” murmured the Secretary.

“What do you say?” asked Mr. Boffin, snapping at him again.

He returned no answer. Mr. Boffin, after eyeing him with a comical look of discomfited curiosity, was fain to begin afresh.

“This Rokesmith is a needy young man that I take for my Secretary out of the open street. This Rokesmith gets acquainted with my affairs, and gets to know that I mean to settle a sum of money on this young lady. ‘Oho!’ says this Rokesmith;” here Mr. Boffin clapped a finger against his nose, and tapped it several times with a sneaking air, as embodying Rokesmith confidentially confabulating with his own nose; “ ‘This will be a good haul; I’ll go in for this!’ And so this Rokesmith, greedy and hungering, begins a-creeping on his hands and knees towards the money. Not so bad a speculation either: for if this young lady had had less spirit, or had had less sense, through being at all in the romantic line, by George he might have worked it out and made it pay! But fortunately she was too many for him, and a pretty figure he cuts now he is exposed. There he stands!” said Mr. Boffin, addressing Rokesmith himself with ridiculous inconsistency. “Look at him!”

“Your unfortunate suspicions, Mr. Boffin—” began the Secretary.