“Truly, I supposed he did.”

Bella was nervous now, and would have been glad to recall her question.

“You thought it strange that, feeling much interested in you, I should start at what sounded like a proposal to bring you into contact with the murdered man who lies in his grave. I might have known — of course in a moment should have known — that it could not have that meaning. But my interest remains.”

Re-entering the family-room in a meditative state, Miss Bella was received by the irrepressible Lavinia with:

“There, Bella! At last I hope you have got your wishes realized — by your Boffins. You’ll be rich enough now — with your Boffins. You can have as much flirting as you like — at your Boffins. But you won’t take me to your Boffins, I can tell you — you and your Boffins too!”

“If,” quoth Mr George Sampson, moodily pulling his stopper out, “Miss Bella’s Mr Boffin comes any more of his nonsense to me, I only wish him to understand, as betwixt man and man, that he does it at his per — ” and was going to say peril; but Miss Lavinia, having no confidence in his mental powers, and feeling his oration to have no definite application to any circumstances, jerked his stopper in again, with a sharpness that made his eyes water.

And now the worthy Mrs Wilfer, having used her youngest daughter as a lay-figure for the edification of these Boffins, became bland to her, and proceeded to develop her last instance of force of character, which was still in reserve. This was, to illuminate the family with her remarkable powers as a physiognomist; powers that terrified R. W. whenever let loose, as being always fraught with gloom and evil which no inferior prescience was aware of. And this Mrs Wilfer now did, be it observed, in jealousy of these Boffins, in the very same moments when she was already reflecting how she would flourish these very same Boffins and the state they kept, over the heads of her Boffinless friends.

“Of their manners,” said Mrs Wilfer, “I say nothing. Of their appearance, I say nothing. Of the disinterestedness of their intentions towards Bella, I say nothing. But the craft, the secresy, the dark deep underhanded plotting, written in Mrs Boffin’s countenance, make me shudder.”

As an incontrovertible proof that those baleful attributes were all there, Mrs Wilfer shuddered on the spot.