‘Well,’ said Mr Merdle, ‘I haven’t been dining anywhere, particularly.’

‘Of course you have dined?’ said Fanny.

‘Why—no, I haven’t exactly dined,’ said Mr Merdle.

He had passed his hand over his yellow forehead and considered, as if he were not sure about it. Something to eat was proposed. ‘No, thank you,’ said Mr Merdle, ‘I don’t feel inclined for it. I was to have dined out along with Mrs Merdle. But as I didn’t feel inclined for dinner, I let Mrs Merdle go by herself just as we were getting into the carriage, and thought I’d take a stroll instead.’

Would he have tea or coffee? ‘No, thank you,’ said Mr Merdle. ‘I looked in at the Club, and got a bottle of wine.’

At this period of his visit, Mr Merdle took the chair.which Edmund Sparkler had offered him, and which he had hitherto been pushing slowly about before him, like a dull man with a pair of skates on for the first time, who could not make up his mind to start. He now put his hat upon another chair beside him, and, looking down into it as if it were some twenty feet deep, said again: ‘You see I thought I’d give you a call.’

‘Flattering to us,’ said Fanny, ‘for you are not a calling man.’

‘No—no,’ returned Mr Merdle, who was by this time taking himself into custody under both coat-sleeves. ‘No, I am not a calling man.’

‘You have too much to do for that,’ said Fanny. ‘Having so much to do, Mr Merdle, loss of appetite is a serious thing with you, and you must have it seen to. You must not be ill.’ ‘Oh! I am very well,’ replied Mr Merdle, after deliberating about it. ‘I am as well as I usually am. I am well enough. I am as well as I want to be.’

The master-mind of the age, true to its characteristic of being at all times a mind that had as little as possible to say for itself and great difficulty in saying it, became mute again. Mrs Sparkler began to wonder how long the master-mind meant to stay.

‘I was speaking of poor papa when you came in, sir.’

‘Aye! Quite a coincidence,’ said Mr Merdle.

Fanny did not see that; but felt it incumbent on her to continue talking. ‘I was saying,’ she pursued, ‘that my brother’s illness has occasioned a delay in examining and arranging papa’s property.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Merdle; ‘yes. There has been a delay.’

‘Not that it is of consequence,’ said Fanny.

‘Not,’ assented Mr Merdle, after having examined the cornice of all that part of the room which was within his range: ‘not that it is of any consequence.’

‘My only anxiety is,’ said Fanny, ‘that Mrs General should not get anything.’

‘She won’t get anything,’ said Mr Merdle.

Fanny was delighted to hear him express the opinion. Mr Merdle, after taking another gaze into the depths of his hat as if he thought he saw something at the bottom, rubbed his hair and slowly appended to his last remark the confirmatory words, ‘Oh dear no. No. Not she. Not likely.’