‘Take your version of it,’ returned Arthur, finding it left to him to speak, ‘from my mother. Let it rest there. What I have said, was said to my mother only.’ ‘Oh!’ returned the old man. ‘From your mother? Take it from your mother? Well! But your mother mentioned that you had been suspecting your father. That’s not dutiful, Mr Arthur. Who will you be suspecting next?’

‘Enough,’ said Mrs Clennam, turning her face so that it was addressed for the moment to the old man only. ‘Let no more be said about this.’

‘Yes, but stop a bit, stop a bit,’ the old man persisted. ‘Let us see how we stand. Have you told Mr Arthur that he mustn’t lay offences at his father’s door? That he has no right to do it? That he has no ground to go upon?’

‘I tell him so now.’

‘Ah! Exactly,’ said the old man. ‘You tell him so now. You hadn’t told him so before, and you tell him so now. Ay, ay! That’s right! You know I stood between you and his father so long, that it seems as if death had made no difference, and I was still standing between you. So I will, and so in fairness I require to have that plainly put forward. Arthur, you please to hear that you have no right to mistrust your father, and have no ground to go upon.’

He put his hands to the back of the wheeled chair, and muttering to himself, slowly wheeled his mistress back to her cabinet. ‘Now,’ he resumed, standing behind her: ‘in case I should go away leaving things half done, and so should be wanted again when you come to the other half and get into one of your flights, has Arthur told you what he means to do about the business?’

‘He has relinquished it.’

‘In favour of nobody, I suppose?’

Mrs Clennam glanced at her son, leaning against one of the windows.

He observed the look and said, ‘To my mother, of course. She does what she pleases.’

‘And if any pleasure,’ she said after a short pause, ‘could arise for me out of the disappointment of my expectations that my son, in the prime of his life, would infuse new youth and strength into it, and make it of great profit and power, it would be in advancing an old and faithful servant. Jeremiah, the captain deserts the ship, but you and I will sink or float with it.’

Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if they saw money, darted a sudden look at the son, which seemed to say, ‘I owe you no thanks for this; you have done nothing towards it!’ and then told the mother that he thanked her, and that Affery thanked her, and that he would never desert her, and that Affery would never desert her. Finally, he hauled up his watch from its depths, and said, ‘Eleven. Time for your oysters!’ and with that change of subject, which involved no change of expression or manner, rang the bell.

But Mrs Clennam, resolved to treat herself with the greater rigour for having been supposed to be unacquainted with reparation, refused to eat her oysters when they were brought. They looked tempting; eight in number, circularly set out on a white plate on a tray covered with a white napkin, flanked by a slice of buttered French roll, and a little compact glass of cool wine and water; but she resisted all persuasions, and sent them down again—placing the act to her credit, no doubt, in her Eternal Day-Book.

This refection of oysters was not presided over by Affery, but by the girl who had appeared when the bell was rung; the same who had been in the dimly-lighted room last night. Now that he had an opportunity of observing her, Arthur found that her diminutive figure, small features, and slight spare dress, gave her the appearance of being much younger than she was. A woman, probably of not less than two-and- twenty, she might have been passed in the street for little more than half that age. Not that her face