Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the fire. After a prolonged pause, he replied: “I don’t know that. I must ask you not to say that, as if we took it for granted.”

“But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to herself.”

Having again paused as before, Eugene said: “I don’t know that, either. But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble about anything, as about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for information.”

“My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!”

“Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.”

“I asked you for information, Eugene,” said Mortimer reproachfully.

“Dear boy, I know it, but I can’t give it. I thirst for information. What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does not mean that I care for her, what does it mean? ‘If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where’s the peck,’ &c.?”

Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and inquisitive face, as if he actually did not know what to make of himself. “Look on to the end — ” Lightwood was beginning to remonstrate, when he caught at the words:

“Ah! See now! That’s exactly what I am incapable of doing. How very acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When we were at school together, I got up my lessons at the last moment, day by day and bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up my lessons in the same way. In the present task I have not got beyond this:— I am bent on finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her, and I will take any means of finding her that offer themselves. Fair means or foul means, are all alike to me. I ask you — for information — what does that mean? When I have found her I may ask you — also for information — what do I mean now? But it would be premature in this stage, and it’s not the character of my mind.”

Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his friend held forth thus — an air so whimsically open and argumentative as almost to deprive what he said of the appearance of evasion — when a shuffling was heard at the outer door, and then an undecided knock, as though some hand were groping for the knocker. “The frolicsome youth of the neighbourhood,” said Eugene, “whom I should be delighted to pitch from this elevation into the church-yard below, without any intermediate ceremonies, have probably turned the lamp out. I am on duty to-night, and will see to the door.”

His friend had barely had time to recall the unprecedented gleam of determination with which he had spoken of finding this girl, and which had faded out of him with the breath of the spoken words, when Eugene came back, ushering in a most disgraceful shadow of a man, shaking from head to foot, and clothed in shabby grease and smear.

“This interesting gentleman,” said Eugene, “is the son — the occasionally rather trying son, for he has his failings — of a lady of my acquaintance. My dear Mortimer — Mr. Dolls.” Eugene had no idea what his name was, knowing the little dressmaker’s to be assumed, but presented him with easy confidence under the first appellation that his associations suggested.

“I gather, my dear Mortimer,” pursued Eugene, as Lightwood stared at the obscene visitor, “from the manner of Mr. Dolls — which is occasionally complicated — that he desires to make some communication to me. I have mentioned to Mr. Dolls that you and I are on terms of confidence, and have requested Mr. Dolls to develop his views here.”