remarkable pipe. But without the least effect, though even Mr. Fledgeby’s attractions were cast into the scale.
“I fear, Bella dear,” said Mrs. Lammle one day in the chariot, “that you will be very hard to please.”
“I don’t expect to be pleased, dear,” said Bella, with a languid turn of her eyes.
“Truly, my love,” returned Sophronia, shaking her head, and smiling her best smile, “it would not be very easy to find a man worthy of your attractions.”
“The question is not a man, my dear,” said Bella, coolly, “but an establishment.”
“My love,” returned Mrs. Lammle, “your prudence amazes me — where did you study life so well! — you are right. In such a case as yours, the object is a fitting establishment. You could not descend to an inadequate one from Mr. Boffin’s house, and even if your beauty alone could not command it, it is to be assumed that Mr. and Mrs. Boffin will—”
“Oh! they have already,” Bella interposed.
“No! Have they really?”
A little vexed by a suspicion that she had spoken precipitately, and withal a little defiant of her own vexation, Bella determined not to retreat.
“That is to say,” she explained, “they have told me they mean to portion me as their adopted child, if you mean that. But don’t mention it.”
“Mention it!” replied Mrs. Lammle, as if she were full of awakened feeling at the suggestion of such an impossibility. “Men-tion it!”
“I don’t mind telling you, Mrs. Lammle—” Bella began again.
“My love, say Sophronia, or I must not say Bella.”
With a little short, petulant “Oh!” Bella complied. “Oh! — Sophronia then — I don’t mind telling you, Sophronia, that I am convinced I have no heart, as people call it; and that I think that sort of thing is nonsense.”
“Brave girl!” murmured Mrs. Lammle.
“And so,” pursued Bella, “as to seeking to please myself, I don’t; except in the one respect I have mentioned. I am indifferent otherwise.”
“But you can’t help pleasing, Bella,” said Mrs. Lammle, rallying her with an arch look and her best smile, “you can’t help making a proud and an admiring husband. You may not care to please yourself, and you may not care to please him, but you are not a free agent as to pleasing: you are forced to do that, in spite of yourself, my dear; so it may be a question whether you may not as well please yourself too, if you can.”
Now, the very grossness of this flattery put Bella upon proving that she actually did please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving that she was doing wrong — though she had an indistinct foreshadowing that some harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought what consequences it would really bring about — but she went on with her confidence.
“Don’t talk of pleasing in spite of one’s self, dear,” said Bella. “I have had enough of that.”