He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl’s manner being so natural as to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous doubts. He replied, ‘I must seek for intelligence elsewhere.’
He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly at him, and said:
‘Are they well, sir?’
‘Who?’
She stopped herself in saying what would have been ‘all of them;’ glanced at Miss Wade; and said ‘Mr and Mrs Meagles.’
‘They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way, let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?’
‘Where? Where does any one say I was seen?’ returned the girl, sullenly casting down her eyes.
‘Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage.’
‘No,’ said Miss Wade. ‘She has never been near it.’
‘You are wrong, then,’ said the girl. ‘I went down there the last time we were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me alone. And I did look in.’
‘You poor-spirited girl,’ returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt; ‘does all our companionship, do all our conversations, do all your old complainings, tell for so little as that?’
‘There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,’ said the girl. ‘I saw by the windows that the family were not there.’
‘Why should you go near the place?’
‘Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look at it again.’
As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to pieces.
‘Oh!’ said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; ‘if you had any desire to see the place where you led the life from which I rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is another thing. But is that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is that the common cause I make with you? You are not worth the confidence I have placed in you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You are no higher than a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who did worse than whip you.’
‘If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you’ll provoke me to take their part,’ said the girl.
‘Go back to them,’ Miss Wade retorted. ‘Go back to them.’
‘You know very well,’ retorted Harriet in her turn, ‘that I won’t go back to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off, and never can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then, Miss Wade.’
‘You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,’ she rejoined. ‘You exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have expected? I ought to have known it.’