down-cast eyes, and at the quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright brown hair over the beautiful neck, would probably have remained silent.
‘I wish to speak to you, sir,’ said Bella, ‘once for all, and I don’t know how to do it. I have sat here all this evening, wishing to speak to you, and determining to speak to you, and feeling that I must. I beg for a moment’s time.’
He remained silent, and she remained with her face averted, sometimes making a slight movement as if she would turn and speak. At length she did so.
‘You know how I am situated here, sir, and you know how I am situated at home. I must speak to you for myself, since there is no one about me whom I could ask to do so. It is not generous in you, it is not honourable in you, to conduct yourself towards me as you do.’
‘Is it ungenerous or dishonourable to be devoted to you; fascinated by you?’
‘Preposterous!’ said Bella.
The late John Harmon might have thought it rather a contemptuous and lofty word of repudiation.
‘I now feel obliged to go on,’ pursued the Secretary, ‘though it were only in self-explanation and self-defence. I hope, Miss Wilfer, that it is not unpardonable—even in me—to make an honest declaration of an honest devotion to you.’
‘An honest declaration!’ repeated Bella, with emphasis.
‘Is it otherwise?’
‘I must request, sir,’ said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely resentment, ‘that I may not be questioned. You must excuse me if I decline to be cross-examined.’
‘Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable. I ask you nothing but what your own emphasis suggests. However, I waive even that question. But what I have declared, I take my stand by. I cannot recall the avowal of my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I do not recall it.’
‘I reject it, sir,’ said Bella.
‘I should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply. Forgive my offence, for it carries its punishment with it.’
‘What punishment?’ asked Bella.
‘Is my present endurance none? But excuse me; I did not mean to cross-examine you again.’
‘You take advantage of a hasty word of mine,’ said Bella with a little sting of self-reproach, ‘to make me seem—I don’t know what. I spoke without consideration when I used it. If that was bad, I am sorry; but you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to me to be at least no better. For the rest, I beg it may be understood, Mr Rokesmith, that there is an end of this between us, now and for ever.’
‘Now and for ever,’ he repeated.
‘Yes. I appeal to you, sir,’ proceeded Bella with increasing spirit, ‘not to pursue me. I appeal to you not to take advantage of your position in this house to make my position in it distressing and disagreeable. I appeal to you to discontinue your habit of making your misplaced attentions as plain to Mrs Boffin as to me.’
‘Have I done so?’
‘I should think you have,’ replied Bella. ‘In any case it is not your fault if you have not, Mr Rokesmith.’
‘I hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very sorry to have justified it. I think I have not. For the future there is no apprehension. It is all over.’
‘I am much relieved to hear it,’ said Bella. ‘I have far other views in life, and why should you waste your own?’
‘Mine!’ said the Secretary. ‘My life!’
His curious tone caused Bella to glance at the curious smile with which he said it. It was gone as he glanced back. ‘Pardon me, Miss Wilfer,’ he proceeded, when their eyes met; ‘you have used some hard words, for which I do not doubt you have a justification in your mind, that I do not understand. Ungenerous and dishonourable. In what?’
‘I would rather not be asked,’ said Bella, haughtily looking down.
‘I would rather not ask, but the question is imposed upon me. Kindly explain; or if not kindly, justly.’
‘Oh, sir!’ said Bella, raising her eyes to his, after a little struggle to forbear, ‘is it generous and honourable to use the power here which your favour with Mr and Mrs Boffin and your ability in your place give you, against me?’
‘Against you?’
‘Is it generous and honourable to form a plan for gradually bringing their influence to bear upon a suit which I have shown you that I do not like, and which I tell you that I utterly reject?’
The late John Harmon could have borne a good deal, but he would have been cut to the heart by such a suspicion as this.
‘Would it be generous and honourable to step into your place—if you did so, for I don’t know that you did, and I hope you did not—anticipating, or knowing beforehand, that I should come here, and designing to take me at this disadvantage?’
‘This mean and cruel disadvantage,’ said the Secretary.
‘Yes,’ assented Bella.
The Secretary kept silence for a little while; then merely said, ‘You are wholly mistaken, Miss Wilfer; wonderfully mistaken. I cannot say, however, that it is your fault. If I deserve better things of you, you do not know it.’
‘At least, sir,’ retorted Bella, with her old indignation rising, ‘you know the history of my being here at all. I have heard Mr Boffin say that you are master of every line and word of that will, as you are master of all his affairs. And was it not enough that I should have been willed away, like a horse, or a dog, or a bird; but must you too begin to dispose of me in your mind, and speculate in me, as soon as I had ceased to be the talk and the laugh of the town? Am I for ever to be made the property of strangers?’
‘Believe me,’ returned the Secretary, ‘you are wonderfully mistaken.’
‘I should be glad to know it,’ answered Bella.
‘I doubt if you ever will. Good-night. Of course I shall be careful to conceal any traces of this interview from Mr and Mrs Boffin, as long as I remain here. Trust me, what you have complained of is at an end for ever.’
‘I am glad I have spoken, then, Mr Rokesmith. It has been painful and difficult, but it is done. If I have hurt you, I hope you will forgive me. I am inexperienced and impetuous, and I have been a little spoilt; but I really am not so bad as I dare say I appear, or as you think me.’
He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her wilful inconsistent way. Left alone, she threw herself back on her ottoman, and said, ‘I didn’t know the lovely woman was such a Dragon!’ Then, she got up and looked in the glass, and said to her image, ‘You have been positively swelling your features, you little fool!’ Then, she took an impatient walk to the other end of the room and back, and said, ‘I wish Pa was here to have a talk about an avaricious marriage; but he is better away, poor dear, for I know I should pull his hair if he was here.’ And then she threw her work away, and threw her book after it, and sat down and hummed a tune, and hummed it out of tune, and quarrelled
