Apparently, Mr Venus does not know what to think of him, for he makes sundry efforts to reply, without delivering himself of any other articulate utterance than that he has “a singular look.”

“A double look, you mean, sir,” rejoins Wegg, playing bitterly upon the word. “That’s his look. Any amount of singular look for me, but not a double look! That’s an under-handed mind, sir.”

“Do you say there’s something against him?” Venus asks.

“Something against him?” repeats Wegg. “Something? What would the relief be to my feelings — as a fellow-man — if I wasn’t the slave of truth, and didn’t feel myself compelled to answer, Everything!”

See into what wonderful maudlin refuges, featherless ostriches plunge their heads! It is such unspeakable moral compensation to Wegg, to be overcome by the consideration that Mr Rokesmith has an underhanded mind!

“On this starlight night, Mr Venus,” he remarks, when he is showing that friendly mover out across the yard, and both are something the worse for mixing again and again: “on this starlight night to think that talking-over strangers, and underhanded minds, can go walking home under the sky, as if they was all square!”

“The spectacle of those orbs,” says Mr Venus, gazing upward with his hat tumbling off; “brings heavy on me her crushing words that she did not wish to regard herself nor yet to be regarded in that —”

“I know! I know! You needn’t repeat ’em,” says Wegg, pressing his hand. “But think how those stars steady me in the cause of the right against some that shall be nameless. It isn’t that I bear malice. But see how they glisten with old remembrances! Old remembrances of what, sir?”

Mr Venus begins drearily replying, “Of her words, in her own handwriting, that she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet —” when Silas cuts him short with dignity.

“No, sir! Remembrances of Our House, of Master George, of Aunt Jane, of Uncle Parker, all laid waste! All offered up sacrifices to the minion of fortune and the worm of the hour!”


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