Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend

BOOK THE SECOND: BIRDS OF A FEATHER Chapter 11: Some Affairs of the Heart (continued)

She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending with himself in a heat of passion and torment. After a while he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands.

'There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most important. There is a reason against this matter, there is a personal relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to you. It might--I don't say it would--it might--induce you to think differently. To proceed under the present circumstances is out of the question. Will you please come to the understanding that there shall be another interview on the subject?'

'With Charley, Mr Headstone?'

'With--well,' he answered, breaking off, 'yes! Say with him too. Will you please come to the understanding that there must be another interview under more favourable circumstances, before the whole case can be submitted?'

'I don't,' said Lizzie, shaking her head, 'understand your meaning, Mr Headstone.'

'Limit my meaning for the present,' he interrupted, 'to the whole case being submitted to you in another interview.'

'What case, Mr Headstone? What is wanting to it?'

'You--you shall be informed in the other interview.' Then he said, as if in a burst of irrepressible despair, 'I--I leave it all incomplete! There is a spell upon me, I think!' And then added, almost as if he asked for pity, 'Good-night!'

He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say reluctance, touched it, a strange tremble passed over him, and his face, so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of pain. Then he was gone.

The dolls' dressmaker sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the door by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat down near her. Then, eyeing Lizzie as she had previously eyed Bradley and the door, Miss Wren chopped that very sudden and keen chop in which her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned back in her chair with folded arms, and thus expressed herself: