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even though Fanny had not been, under the best of circumstances, the

least trifle in the way. In such further communication as passed among

them before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it

was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very

fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of

the depths of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that

she doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered

whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his want

of such qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that,

in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they

drifted anywhere.

He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the

poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited, and

remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who

would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would

live in better to oblige them. At the water's edge they were saluted by

Blandois, who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made

very light of it notwithstanding,--laughing at the mention of Lion.

Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway,

Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and Blandois

lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had

come. They had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became

aware that Fanny was more showy in manner than the occasion appeared to

require, and, looking about for the cause through the window and through

the open door, saw another gondola evidently in waiting on them.

As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways;

sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass; sometimes,

when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them;

and sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny gradually made no

disguise that she was playing off graces upon somebody within it, of

whom she at the same time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at

length asked who it was?

To which Fanny made the short answer, 'That gaby.'

'Who?' said Little Dorrit.

'My dear child,' returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before her

Uncle's protest she might have said, You little fool, instead), 'how

slow you are! Young Sparkler.'

She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her

elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan of black

and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some

swift trace of an eye in the window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and

said, 'Did you ever see such a fool, my love?'

'Do you think he means to follow you all the way?' asked Little Dorrit.

'My precious child,' returned Fanny, 'I can't possibly answer for what

an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think it highly

probable. It's not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely

be that, I imagine, if he's dying for a glimpse of me.'

'And is he?' asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.

'Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,'

said her sister. 'I believe he is. You had better ask Edward. He tells

Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of

himself at the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me.

But you had better ask Edward if you want to know.'

'I wonder he doesn't call,' said Little Dorrit after thinking a moment.

'My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly informed.

I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The creature has

only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.'

'Will you see him?'

'Indeed, my darling,' said Fanny, 'that's just as it may happen. Here he

is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!'

Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the

window like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for stopping his

bark suddenly, except the real reason.

'When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,' said Fanny, almost as

well composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude as Mrs Merdle

herself, 'what do you mean?' 'I mean,' said Little Dorrit--'I think I

rather mean what do you mean, dear Fanny?'

Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and

affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully

affectionate way:

'Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny, how

did you think she carried it off? Did you see what she decided on in a

moment?'

'No, Fanny.'

'Then I'll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I'll never

refer to that meeting under such different circumstances, and I'll never

pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls. That's her way

out of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we came away from Harley

Street that time? She is as insolent and false as any woman in the

world. But in the first capacity, my love, she may find people who can

match her.'

A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny's bosom, indicated

with great expression where one of these people was to be found.

'Not only that,' pursued Fanny, 'but she gives the same charge to

Young Sparkler; and doesn't let him come after me until she has got it

thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles (for one

really can't call it a head), that he is to pretend to have been first

struck with me in that Inn Yard.'

'Why?' asked Little Dorrit.

'Why? Good gracious, my love!' (again very much in the tone of You

stupid little creature) 'how can you ask? Don't you see that I may have

become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don't you see that she

puts the deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while she shifts it

from her own shoulders (very good shoulders they are too, I must say),'

observed Miss Fanny, glancing complacently at herself, 'of considering

our feelings?'

'But we can always go back to the plain truth.'

'Yes, but if you please we won't,' retorted Fanny. 'No; I am not going

to have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it's hers, and she

shall have enough of it.'

In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using her

Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister's waist with the other,

as if she were crushing Mrs Merdle.

'No,' repeated Fanny. 'She shall find me go her way. She took it, and

I'll follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and fortune, I'll go on

improving that woman's acquaintance until I have given her maid,

before her eyes, things from my dressmaker's ten times as handsome and

expensive as she once gave me from hers!'

Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on

any question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose to no

purpose her sister's newly and unexpectedly restored favour. She could

not concur, but she was silent. Fanny well knew what she was thinking

of; so well, that she soon asked her.

Her reply was, 'Do you mean to encourage Mr Sparkler, Fanny?'

'Encourage him, my dear?' said her sister, smiling contemptuously, 'that

depends upon what you call encourage. No, I don't mean to encourage him.

But I'll make a slave of him.'

Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but Fanny

was not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of black and

gold, and used it to tap her sister's nose; with the air of a proud

beauty and a great spirit, who toyed with and playfully instructed a

homely companion.

'I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him subject

to me. And if I don't make his mother subject to me, too, it shall not

be my fault.'

'Do you think--dear Fanny, don't be offended, we are so comfortable

together now--that you can quite see the end of that course?'

'I can't say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,' answered

Fanny, with supreme indifference; 'all in good time. Such are my

intentions. And really they have taken me so long to develop, that here

we are at home. And Young Sparkler at the door, inquiring who is within.

By the merest accident, of course!'

In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, card-case in

hand, affecting to put the question to a servant. This conjunction

of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting himself

before the young ladies in a posture, which in ancient times would not

have been considered one of favourable augury for his suit; since the

gondoliers of the young ladies, having been put to some inconvenience

by the chase, so neatly brought their own boat in the gentlest collision

with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman over like a

larger species of ninepin, and cause him to exhibit the soles of his

shoes to the object of his dearest wishes: while the nobler portions of

his anatomy struggled at the bottom of his boat in the arms of one of

his men.

However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the gentleman

hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more restored than might have been expected, and

stammered for himself with blushes, 'Not at all so.' Miss Fanny had no

recollection of having ever seen him before, and was passing on, with a

distant inclination of her head, when he announced himself by name. Even

then she was in a difficulty from being unable to call it to mind, until

he explained that he had had the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then

she remembered him, and hoped his lady-mother was well.

'Thank you,' stammered Mr Sparkler, 'she's uncommonly well--at least,

poorly.'

'In Venice?' said Miss Fanny.

'In Rome,' Mr Sparkler answered. 'I am here by myself, myself. I came to

call upon Mr Edward Dorrit myself. Indeed, upon Mr Dorrit likewise. In

fact, upon the family.'

Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired whether her

papa or brother was within? The reply being that they were both within,

Mr Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny accepting it, was squired

up the great staircase by Mr Sparkler, who, if he still believed (which

there is not any reason to doubt) that she had no nonsense about her,

rather deceived himself.

Arrived in a mouldering reception-room, where the faded hangings, of a

sad sea-green, had worn and withered until they looked as if they

might have claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed drifting under

the windows, or clinging to the walls and weeping for their imprisoned

relations, Miss Fanny despatched emissaries for her father and brother.

Pending whose appearance, she showed to great advantage on a sofa,

completing Mr Sparkler's conquest with some remarks upon Dante--known

to that gentleman as an eccentric man in the nature of an Old File,

who used to put leaves round his head, and sit upon a stool for some

unaccountable purpose, outside the cathedral at Florence.

Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and most

courtly manners. He inquired particularly after Mrs Merdle. He inquired

particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather twitched out

of himself in small pieces by the shirt-collar, that Mrs Merdle having

completely used up her place in the country, and also her house at

Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don't you see, to remain in

London when there wasn't a soul there, and not feeling herself this year

quite up to visiting about at people's places, had resolved to have

a touch at Rome, where a woman like herself, with a proverbially fine

appearance, and with no nonsense about her, couldn't fail to be a great

acquisition. As to Mr Merdle, he was so much wanted by the men in the

City and the rest of those places, and was such a doosed extraordinary

phenomenon in Buying and Banking and that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if

the monetary system of the country would be able to spare him; though

that his work was occasionally one too many for him, and that he would

be all the better for a temporary shy at an entirely new scene and

climate, Mr Sparkler did not conceal. As to himself, Mr Sparkler

conveyed to the Dorrit family that he was going, on rather particular

business, wherever they were going.

This immense conversational achievement required time, but was effected.

Being effected, Mr Dorrit expressed his hope that Mr Sparkler would

shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the idea so kindly that Mr

Dorrit asked what he was going to do that day, for instance? As he was

going to do nothing that day (his usual occupation, and one for which he

was particularly qualified), he was secured without postponement; being

further bound over to accompany the ladies to the Opera in the evening.

At dinner-time Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus's son taking

after his mother, and made a splendid appearance ascending the great

staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning, she was now thrice

charming, very becomingly dressed in her most suitable colours, and with

an air of negligence upon her that doubled Mr Sparkler's fetters, and

riveted them.

'I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,' said his host at dinner,

'with--ha--Mr Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?'

'Perfectly, sir,' returned Mr Sparkler. 'His mother and my mother are

cronies in fact.'

'If I had thought of it, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage as

magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself, 'you should have despatched

a note to them, asking them to dine to-day. Some of our people could

have--ha--fetched them, and taken them home. We could have spared