alone. Feigning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying her needle until her busy hand was stopped by Mrs. Boffin’s hand being lightly laid upon it. Yielding to the touch, she felt her hand carried to the good soul’s lips, and felt a tear fall on it.

“Oh, my loved husband!” said Mrs. Boffin. “This is hard to see and hear. But my dear Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change in him, he is the best of men.”

He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand comfortingly between her own.

“Eh?” said he, mistrustfully looking in at the door. “What’s she telling you?”

“She is only praising you, sir,” said Bella.

“Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on my own defence against a crew of plunderers, who could suck me dry by driblets? Not blaming me for getting a little hoard together?”

He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his shoulder, and shook her head as she laid it on her hands.

“There, there, there!” urged Mr. Boffin, not unkindly. “Don’t take on, old lady.”

“But I can’t bear to see you so, my dear.”

“Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we must scrunch or be scrunched. Recollect, we must hold our own. Recollect, money makes money. Don’t you be uneasy, Bella, my child; don’t you be doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall have.”

Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with her affectionate face on his shoulder; for there was a cunning light in his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.