‘Not without another effort,’ said Mr Meagles, stoutly. ‘Tattycoram, my poor dear girl, count five-and- twenty.’ ‘Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you,’ said Clennam in a low emphatic voice. ‘Turn to the friends you have not forgotten. Think once more!’

‘I won’t! Miss Wade,’ said the girl, with her bosom swelling high, and speaking with her hand held to her throat, ‘take me away!’

‘Tattycoram,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘Once more yet! The only thing I ask of you in the world, my child! Count five-and-twenty!’

She put her hands tightly over her ears, confusedly tumbling down her bright black hair in the vehemence of the action, and turned her face resolutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who had watched her under this final appeal with that strange attentive smile, and that repressing hand upon her own bosom with which she had watched her in her struggle at Marseilles, then put her arm about her waist as if she took possession of her for evermore.

And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to dismiss the visitors.

‘As it is the last time I shall have the honour,’ she said, ‘and as you have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause. What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I have nothing more to say to you.’

This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam followed, she said to him, with the same external composure and in the same level voice, but with a smile that is only seen on cruel faces: a very faint smile, lifting the nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and not breaking away gradually, but instantly dismissed when done with:

‘I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the contrast of her extraction to this girl’s and mine, and in the high good fortune that awaits her.’