At length, when they had played a great many rubbers and drawn pretty freely upon the case-bottle, Mr Quilp warned his lady to retire to rest, and that submissive wife complying, and being followed by her indignant mother, Mr Swiveller fell asleep. The dwarf beckoning his remaining companion to the other end of the room, held a short conference with him in whispers.

‘It’s as well not to say more than one can help before our worthy friend,’ said Quilp, making a grimace towards the slumbering Dick. ‘Is it a bargain between us, Fred? Shall he marry little rosy Nell by-and- by?’

‘You have some end of your own to answer, of course,’ returned the other.

‘Of course I have, dear Fred,’ said Quilp, grinning to think how little he suspected what the real end was. ‘It’s retaliation perhaps; perhaps whim. I have influence, Fred, to help or oppose. Which way shall I use it? There are a pair of scales, and it goes into one.’

‘Throw it into mine then,’ said Trent.

‘It’s done, Fred,’ rejoined Quilp, stretching out his clenched hand and opening it as if he had let some weight fall out. ‘It’s in the scale from this time, and turns it, Fred. Mind that.’

‘Where have they gone?’ asked Trent.

Quilp shook his head, and said that point remained to be discovered, which it might be, easily. When it was, they would begin their preliminary advances. He would visit the old man, or even Richard Swiveller might visit him, and by affecting a deep concern in his behalf, and imploring him to settle in some worthy home, lead to the child’s remembering him with gratitude and favour. Once impressed to this extent, it would be easy, he said, to win her in a year or two, for she supposed the old man to be poor, as it was a part of his jealous policy (in common with many other misers) to feign to be so, to those about him.

‘He has feigned it often enough to me, of late,’ said Trent.

‘Oh! and to me too!’ replied the dwarf. ‘Which is more extraordinary, as I know how rich he really is.’

‘I suppose you should,’ said Trent.

‘I think I should indeed,’ rejoined the dwarf; and in that, at least, he spoke the truth.

After a few more whispered words, they returned to the table, and the young man rousing Richard Swiveller informed him that he was waiting to depart. This was welcome news to Dick, who started up directly. After a few words of confidence in the result of their project had been exchanged, they bade the grinning Quilp good-night.

Quilp crept to the window as they passed in the street below, and listened. Trent was pronouncing an encomium upon his wife, and they were both wondering by what enchantment she had been brought to marry such a mis-shapen wretch as he. The dwarf after watching their retreating shadows with a wider grin than his face had yet displayed, stole softly in the dark to bed.

In this hatching of their scheme, neither Trent nor Quilp had had one thought about the happiness or misery of poor innocent Nell. It would have been strange if the careless profligate, who was the butt of both, had been harassed by any such consideration; for his high opinion of his own merits and deserts rendered the project rather a laudable one than otherwise; and if he had been visited by so unwonted a guest as reflection, he would — being a brute only in the gratification of his appetites — have soothed his conscience with the plea that he did not mean to beat or kill his wife, and would therefore, after all said and done, be a very tolerable, average husband.


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