Mr Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, — “Wouldn’t you really, my dear?” and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble, and says, “This is a dreadful mystery, my love!” still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs Snagsby’s eye.

“It is,” returns Mrs Snagsby, shaking her head, “a dreadful mystery.”

“My little woman,” urges Mr Snagsby, in a piteous manner, “don’t, for goodness sake, speak to me with that bitter expression, and look at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good lord, you don’t suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?”

“I can’t say,” returns Mrs Snagsby.

On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr Snagsby “can’t say,” either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had something to do with it. He has had something — he don’t know what — to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious, that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, and gasps.

“My life,” says the unhappy stationer, “would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a Wine Vaults before breakfast?”

“Why do you come here?” inquires Mrs Snagsby.

“My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has happened to the venerable party who has been — combusted.” Mr Snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. “I should then have related them to you, my love, over your French roll.”

“I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr Snagsby.”

“Every — my lit —”

“I should be glad,” says Mrs Snagsby, after contemplating his increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, “if you would come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr Snagsby, than anywhere else.”

“My love, I don’t know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to go.”

Mr Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs Snagsby from the Sol’s Arms. Before night, his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood, is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs Snagsby’s pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great, that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice, and requiring to be cleared, if innocent, and punished with the utmost rigour of the law, if guilty.

Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into Lincoln’s Inn to take a little walk about the square, and clear as many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.

“There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony,” says Mr Guppy, after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the square, “for a word or two between us, upon a point on which we must, with very little delay, come to an understanding.”

“Now, I tell you what, William G!” returns the other, eyeing his companion with a bloodshot eye. “If it’s a point of conspiracy, you needn’t take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain’t going to have any more. We shall have you taking fire next, or blowing up with a bang.”