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Amy, said Mr Dorrit, I am well persuaded that if the topic were referred to any person of superior social knowledge, of superior delicacy and senselet us say, for instance, tohaMrs General that there would not be two opinions as to thehumaffectionate character and propriety of my sentiments. But, as I know your loving and dutiful nature fromhumfrom experience, I am quite satisfied that it is necessary to say no more. I havehumno husband to propose at present, my dear: I have not even one in view. I merely wish that we shouldhaunderstand each other. Hum. Good night, my dear and sole remaining daughter. Good night. God bless you! If the thought ever entered Little Dorrits head that night, that he could give her up lightly now in his prosperity, and when he had it in his mind to replace her with a second wife, she drove it away. Faithful to him still, as in the worst times through which she had borne him single-handed, she drove the thought away; and entertained no harder reflection, in her tearful unrest, than that he now saw everything through their wealth, and through the care he always had upon him that they should continue rich, and grow richer. They sat in their equipage of state, with Mrs General on the box, for three weeks longer, and then he started for Florence to join Fanny. Little Dorrit would have been glad to bear him company so far, only for the sake of her own love, and then to have turned back alone, thinking of dear England. But, though the Courier had gone on with the Bride, the Valet was next in the line; and the succession would not have come to her, as long as any one could be got for money. Mrs General took life easilyas easily, that is, as she could take anythingwhen the Roman establishment remained in their sole occupation; and Little Dorrit would often ride out in a hired carriage that was left them, and alight alone and wander among the ruins of old Rome. The ruins of the vast old Amphitheatre, of the old Temples, of the old commemorative Arches, of the old trodden highways, of the old tombs, besides being what they were, to her were ruins of the old Marshalsearuins of her own old liferuins of the faces and forms that of old peopled itruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and joys. Two ruined spheres of action and suffering were before the solitary girl often sitting on some broken fragment; and in the lonely places, under the blue sky, she saw them both together. Up, then, would come Mrs General; taking all the colour out of everything, as Nature and Art had taken it out of herself; writing Prunes and Prism, in Mr Eustaces text, wherever she could lay a hand; looking everywhere for Mr Eustace and company, and seeing nothing else; scratching up the driest little bones of antiquity, and bolting them whole without any human visitingslike a Ghoul in gloves. |
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