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relinquished the tea-pot as her husband seized it, put her apron over

her head, and in a twinkling vanished. The visitor gradually broke into

a smile, and sat down again.

'You'll excuse her, Mr Blandois,' said Jeremiah, pouring out the tea

himself, 'she's failing and breaking up; that's what she's about. Do you

take sugar, sir?'

'Thank you, no tea for me.--Pardon my observing it, but that's a very

remarkable watch!'

The tea-table was drawn up near the sofa, with a small interval between

it and Mrs Clennam's own particular table. Mr Blandois in his gallantry

had risen to hand that lady her tea (her dish of toast was already

there), and it was in placing the cup conveniently within her reach that

the watch, lying before her as it always did, attracted his attention.

Mrs Clennam looked suddenly up at him.

'May I be permitted? Thank you. A fine old-fashioned watch,' he said,

taking it in his hand. 'Heavy for use, but massive and genuine. I have

a partiality for everything genuine. Such as I am, I am genuine myself.

Hah! A gentleman's watch with two cases in the old fashion. May I remove

it from the outer case? Thank you. Aye? An old silk watch-lining, worked

with beads! I have often seen these among old Dutch people and Belgians.

Quaint things!'

'They are old-fashioned, too,' said Mrs Clennam. 'Very. But this is not

so old as the watch, I think?'

'I think not.'

'Extraordinary how they used to complicate these cyphers!' remarked Mr

Blandois, glancing up with his own smile again. 'Now is this D. N. F.?

It might be almost anything.'

'Those are the letters.'

Mr Flintwinch, who had been observantly pausing all this time with a cup

of tea in his hand, and his mouth open ready to swallow the contents,

began to do so: always entirely filling his mouth before he emptied it

at a gulp; and always deliberating again before he refilled it.

'D. N. F. was some tender, lovely, fascinating fair-creature, I make no

doubt,' observed Mr Blandois, as he snapped on the case again. 'I adore

her memory on the assumption. Unfortunately for my peace of mind,

I adore but too readily. It may be a vice, it may be a virtue, but

adoration of female beauty and merit constitutes three parts of my

character, madam.'

Mr Flintwinch had by this time poured himself out another cup of tea,

which he was swallowing in gulps as before, with his eyes directed to

the invalid.

'You may be heart-free here, sir,' she returned to Mr Blandois. 'Those

letters are not intended, I believe, for the initials of any name.'

'Of a motto, perhaps,' said Mr Blandois, casually.

'Of a sentence. They have always stood, I believe, for Do Not Forget!'

'And naturally,' said Mr Blandois, replacing the watch and stepping

backward to his former chair, 'you do not forget.'

Mr Flintwinch, finishing his tea, not only took a longer gulp than he

had taken yet, but made his succeeding pause under new circumstances:

that is to say, with his head thrown back and his cup held still at his

lips, while his eyes were still directed at the invalid. She had that

force of face, and that concentrated air of collecting her firmness or

obstinacy, which represented in her case what would have been gesture

and action in another, as she replied with her deliberate strength of

speech: 'No, sir, I do not forget. To lead a life as monotonous as mine

has been during many years, is not the way to forget. To lead a life of

self-correction is not the way to forget. To be sensible of having (as

we all have, every one of us, all the children of Adam!) offences

to expiate and peace to make, does not justify the desire to forget.

Therefore I have long dismissed it, and I neither forget nor wish to

forget.'

Mr Flintwinch, who had latterly been shaking the sediment at the bottom

of his tea-cup, round and round, here gulped it down, and putting the

cup in the tea-tray, as done with, turned his eyes upon Mr Blandois as

if to ask him what he thought of that?

'All expressed, madam,' said Mr Blandois, with his smoothest bow and his

white hand on his breast, 'by the word "naturally," which I am proud

to have had sufficient apprehension and appreciation (but without

appreciation I could not be Blandois) to employ.'

'Pardon me, sir,' she returned, 'if I doubt the likelihood of a

gentleman of pleasure, and change, and politeness, accustomed to court

and to be courted--'

'Oh madam! By Heaven!'

'--If I doubt the likelihood of such a character quite comprehending

what belongs to mine in my circumstances. Not to obtrude doctrine upon

you,' she looked at the rigid pile of hard pale books before her, '(for

you go your own way, and the consequences are on your own head), I will

say this much: that I shape my course by pilots, strictly by proved and

tried pilots, under whom I cannot be shipwrecked--can not be--and that

if I were unmindful of the admonition conveyed in those three letters, I

should not be half as chastened as I am.'

It was curious how she seized the occasion to argue with some invisible

opponent. Perhaps with her own better sense, always turning upon herself

and her own deception.

'If I forgot my ignorances in my life of health and freedom, I might

complain of the life to which I am now condemned. I never do; I never

have done. If I forgot that this scene, the Earth, is expressly meant to

be a scene of gloom, and hardship, and dark trial, for the creatures who

are made out of its dust, I might have some tenderness for its vanities.

But I have no such tenderness. If I did not know that we are, every one,

the subject (most justly the subject) of a wrath that must be satisfied,

and against which mere actions are nothing, I might repine at the

difference between me, imprisoned here, and the people who pass that

gateway yonder. But I take it as a grace and favour to be elected to

make the satisfaction I am making here, to know what I know for certain

here, and to work out what I have worked out here. My affliction might

otherwise have had no meaning to me. Hence I would forget, and I do

forget, nothing. Hence I am contented, and say it is better with me

than with millions.' As she spoke these words, she put her hand upon the

watch, and restored it to the precise spot on her little table which

it always occupied. With her touch lingering upon it, she sat for some

moments afterwards, looking at it steadily and half-defiantly.

Mr Blandois, during this exposition, had been strictly attentive,

keeping his eyes fastened on the lady, and thoughtfully stroking his

moustache with his two hands. Mr Flintwinch had been a little fidgety,

and now struck in.

'There, there, there!' said he. 'That is quite understood, Mrs Clennam,

and you have spoken piously and well. Mr Blandois, I suspect, is not

of a pious cast.' 'On the contrary, sir!' that gentleman protested,

snapping his fingers. 'Your pardon! It's a part of my character. I am

sensitive, ardent, conscientious, and imaginative. A sensitive, ardent,

conscientious, and imaginative man, Mr Flintwinch, must be that, or

nothing!'

There was an inkling of suspicion in Mr Flintwinch's face that he might

be nothing, as he swaggered out of his chair (it was characteristic of

this man, as it is of all men similarly marked, that whatever he did,

he overdid, though it were sometimes by only a hairsbreadth), and

approached to take his leave of Mrs Clennam.

'With what will appear to you the egotism of a sick old woman, sir,' she

then said, 'though really through your accidental allusion, I have

been led away into the subject of myself and my infirmities. Being so

considerate as to visit me, I hope you will be likewise so considerate

as to overlook that. Don't compliment me, if you please.' For he was

evidently going to do it. 'Mr Flintwinch will be happy to render you any

service, and I hope your stay in this city may prove agreeable.'

Mr Blandois thanked her, and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an

old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking

round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have

not observed it. But it's a genuine old room.'

'It is a genuine old house,' said Mrs Clennam, with her frozen smile. 'A

place of no pretensions, but a piece of antiquity.'

'Faith!' cried the visitor. 'If Mr Flintwinch would do me the favour to

take me through the rooms on my way out, he could hardly oblige me more.

An old house is a weakness with me. I have many weaknesses, but none

greater. I love and study the picturesque in all its varieties. I have

been called picturesque myself. It is no merit to be picturesque--I

have greater merits, perhaps--but I may be, by an accident. Sympathy,

sympathy!'

'I tell you beforehand, Mr Blandois, that you'll find it very dingy and

very bare,' said Jeremiah, taking up the candle. 'It's not worth your

looking at.'But Mr Blandois, smiting him in a friendly manner on the

back, only laughed; so the said Blandois kissed his hand again to Mrs

Clennam, and they went out of the room together.

'You don't care to go up-stairs?' said Jeremiah, on the landing. 'On the

contrary, Mr Flintwinch; if not tiresome to you, I shall be ravished!'

Mr Flintwinch, therefore, wormed himself up the staircase, and Mr

Blandois followed close. They ascended to the great garret bed-room

which Arthur had occupied on the night of his return. 'There, Mr

Blandois!' said Jeremiah, showing it, 'I hope you may think that worth

coming so high to see. I confess I don't.'

Mr Blandois being enraptured, they walked through other garrets and

passages, and came down the staircase again. By this time Mr Flintwinch

had remarked that he never found the visitor looking at any room, after

throwing one quick glance around, but always found the visitor looking

at him, Mr Flintwinch. With this discovery in his thoughts, he turned

about on the staircase for another experiment. He met his eyes directly;

and on the instant of their fixing one another, the visitor, with

that ugly play of nose and moustache, laughed (as he had done at every

similar moment since they left Mrs Clennam's chamber) a diabolically

silent laugh.

As a much shorter man than the visitor, Mr Flintwinch was at the

physical disadvantage of being thus disagreeably leered at from a

height; and as he went first down the staircase, and was usually a

step or two lower than the other, this disadvantage was at the time

increased. He postponed looking at Mr Blandois again until this

accidental inequality was removed by their having entered the late Mr

Clennam's room. But, then twisting himself suddenly round upon him, he

found his look unchanged.

'A most admirable old house,' smiled Mr Blandois. 'So mysterious. Do you

never hear any haunted noises here?'

'Noises,' returned Mr Flintwinch. 'No.'

'Nor see any devils?'

'Not,' said Mr Flintwinch, grimly screwing himself at his questioner,

'not any that introduce themselves under that name and in that

capacity.'

'Haha! A portrait here, I see.'

(Still looking at Mr Flintwinch, as if he were the portrait.)

'It's a portrait, sir, as you observe.'

'May I ask the subject, Mr Flintwinch?'

'Mr Clennam, deceased. Her husband.' 'Former owner of the remarkable

watch, perhaps?' said the visitor.

Mr Flintwinch, who had cast his eyes towards the portrait, twisted

himself about again, and again found himself the subject of the same

look and smile. 'Yes, Mr Blandois,' he replied tartly. 'It was his, and

his uncle's before him, and Lord knows who before him; and that's all I

can tell you of its pedigree.'

'That's a strongly marked character, Mr Flintwinch, our friend

up-stairs.'

'Yes, sir,' said Jeremiah, twisting himself at the visitor again, as he

did during the whole of this dialogue, like some screw-machine that

fell short of its grip; for the other never changed, and he always

felt obliged to retreat a little. 'She is a remarkable woman. Great

fortitude--great strength of mind.'

'They must have been very happy,' said Blandois.

'Who?' demanded Mr Flintwinch, with another screw at him.

Mr Blandois shook his right forefinger towards the sick room, and his

left forefinger towards the portrait, and then, putting his arms akimbo

and striding his legs wide apart, stood smiling down at Mr Flintwinch

with the advancing nose and the retreating moustache.

'As happy as most other married people, I suppose,' returned Mr

Flintwinch. 'I can't say. I don't know. There are secrets in all

families.'

'Secrets!' cried Mr Blandois, quickly. 'Say it again, my son.'

'I say,' replied Mr Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself so

suddenly that Mr Flintwinch found his face almost brushed by the dilated

chest. 'I say there are secrets in all families.'

'So there are,' cried the other, clapping him on both shoulders, and

rolling him backwards and forwards. 'Haha! you are right. So there are!

Secrets! Holy Blue! There are the devil's own secrets in some families,

Mr Flintwinch!' With that, after clapping Mr Flintwinch on both

shoulders several times, as if in a friendly and humorous way he were

rallying him on a joke he had made, he threw up his arms, threw back

his head, hooked his hands together behind it, and burst into a roar of

laughter. It was in vain for Mr Flintwinch to try another screw at him.

He had his laugh out.

'But, favour me with the candle a moment,' he said, when he had done.