fin. "You decline to answer, do you? Then I'll tell you what it is, Rokesmith; I'll answer for you. There are two sides to this matter, and I'll take 'em separately. The first side is, sheer Insolence. That's the first side."

The Secretary smiled with some bitterness, as though he would have said, "So I see and hear." "It was sheer Insolence in you, I tell you," said Mr. Boffin, "even to think of this young lady. This young lady was far above you. This young lady was no match for you. This young lady was lying in wait (as she was qualified to do) for money, and you had no money."

Bella hung her head and seemed to shrink a little from Mr. Boffin's protecting arm.

"What are you, I should like to know," pursued Mr. Boffin, "that you were to have the audacity to follow up this young lady? This young lady was looking about the market for a good bid; she wasn't in it to be snapped up by fellows that had no money to lay out; nothing to buy with."

"Oh, Mr. Boffin! Mrs. Boffin, pray say something for me!" murmured Bella, disengaging her arm, and covering her face with her hands.

"Old lady," said Mr. Boffin, anticipating his

wife, "you hold your tongue. Bella, my dear, don't you let yourself be put out. I'll right you."

"But you don't, you don't right me!" exclaimed Bella, with great emphasis. "You wrong me, wrong me!"

"Don't you be put out, my dear," complacently retorted Mr. Boffin. "I'll bring this young man to book. Now, you Rokesmith! You can't decline to hear, you know, as well as to answer. You hear me tell you that the first side of your conduct was Insolence-Insolence and Presumption. Answer me one thing, if you can. Didn't this young lady tell you so herself?"

"Did I, Mr. Rokesmith ?" asked Bella, with her face still covered. "Oh say, Mr. Rokesmith! Did I?"

"Go on, Mr. Boffin; don't appeal to me." "Not appeal to you," retorted Mr. Boffin, as if he hadn't done so. "No, I should hope not! Appealing to you would be rather a rum course. As I was saying, you're a needy chap that I pick up in the street. You come and ask me in the

street to take you for a Secretary, and I take you. Very good."

"Very bad," murmured the Secretary. "What do you say?" asked Mr. Boffin, snapping at him again.

He returned no answer. Mr. Boffin, after eying him with a comical look of discomfited curiosity, was fain to begin afresh.

"This Rokesmith is a needy young man that

"But I have asked him to forgive me since," cried Bella; "and I would ask him to forgive me now again, upon my knees, if it would spare him!"

Here Mrs. Boffin broke out a-crying.

“Old lady,” said Mr. Boffin, "stop that noise! Tender-hearted in you, Miss Bella; but I mean to have it out right through with this young man, having got him into a corner. Now, you Rokesmith. I tell you that's one side of your conduct-Insolence and Presumption. Now I'm a-coming to the other, which is much worse. This was a speculation of yours."

"I indignantly deny it."

"It's of no use your denying it; it doesn't signify a bit whether you deny it or not; I've got a head upon my shoulders, and it ain't a baby's. What!" said Mr. Boffin, gathering himself together in his most suspicious attitude, and wrinkling his face into a very map of curves and corners. "Don't I know what grabs are made at a man with money? If I didn't keep my eyes open and my pockets buttoned, shouldn't I be brought to the work-house before I knew where I was? Wasn't the experience of Dancer, and Elwes, and Hopkins, and Blewbury Jones, and ever so many more of 'em, similar to mine? Didn't every body want to make grabs at what they'd got, and bring 'em to poverty and ruin? Weren't they forced to hide every thing belonging to 'em, for fear it should be snatched from 'em? Of course they was. I shall be told next that they didn't know human natur!"

"They! Poor creatures," murmured the Secretary.

"What do you say?" asked Mr. Boffin, snapping at him. "However, you needn't be at the trouble of repeating it, for it ain't worth hearing, and won't go down with me. I'm a-going to unfold your plan before this young lady; I'm a-going to show this young lady the second view of you; and nothing you can say will stave it off. (Now, attend here, Bella, my dear.) Roke

of money on this young lady. 'Oho!' says this Rokesmith;" here Mr. Boffin clapped a finger against his nose, and tapped it several times with a sneaking air, as embodying Rokesmith confidentially confabulating with his own nose; "This will be a good haul; I'll go in for this!' And so this Rokesmith, greedy and hungering, begins a-creeping on his hands and knees toward the money. Not so bad a speculation either: for if this young lady had had less spirit, or had had less sense, through being at all in the romantic line, by George he might have worked it out and made it pay! But fortunately she was too many for him, and a pretty figure he cuts now he is exposed. There he stands!" said Mr. Boffin, addressing Rokesmith himself with ridiculous inconsistency. "Look at him!"

"Your unfortunate suspicions, Mr. Boffin-" began the Secretary.

"Precious unfortunate for you, I can tell you," said Mr. Boffin.

"-are not to be combated by any one, and I address myself to no such hopeless task. But I will say a word upon the truth."

"Yah! Much you care about the truth," said Mr. Boffin, with a snap of his fingers. "Noddy! My dear love!" expostulated his wife.

"Old lady," returned Mr. Boffin, "you keep still. I say to this Rokesmith here, much he cares about the truth. I tell him again, much he cares about the truth."

"Our connection being at an end, Mr. Boffin," said the Secretary, "it can be of very little moment to me what you say."

"Oh! You are knowing enough," retorted Mr. Boffin, with a sly look, "to have found out that our connection's at an end, eh? But you can't get beforehand with me. Look at this in my hand. This is your pay, on your discharge. You can only follow suit. You can't deprive me of the lead. Let's have no pretending that you discharge yourself. I discharge you."

"So that I go," remarked the Secretary, wav

to me."

"Is it?" said Mr. Boffin.

"But it's two to me, let me tell you. Allowing a fellow that's found out, to discharge himself, is one thing; discharging him for insolence and presumption, and likewise for designs upon his master's money, is another. One and one's two; not one. (Old lady, don't you cut in. You keep still.)" "Have you said all you wish to say to me?" demanded the Secretary.

removing her still farther from me, and making me more hopeless, if that could be. Say," remarked the Secretary, looking full at his late master, "say that with a word she could strip Mr. Boffin of his fortune and take possession of it, she would be of no greater worth in my eyes than she is."

"What do you think by this time, old lady," asked Mr. Boffin, turning to his wife in a bantering tone," about this Rokesmith here, and

"Perhaps you will consider whether there are any other strong expressions that you would like to bestow upon me?"

"I'll consider that," said Mr. Boffin, obstinately, "at my convenience, and not at yours. You want the last word. It may not be suitable to let you have it."

"Noddy! My dear, dear Noddy! You sound so hard!" cried poor Mrs. Boffin, not to be quite repressed.

"Old lady," said her husband, but without harshness, "if you cut in when requested not, I'll get a pillow and carry you out of the room upon it. What do you want to say, you Rokesmith ?"

"To you, Mr. Boffin, nothing. But to Miss Wilfer and to your good kind wife, a word."

"Out with it then," replied Mr. Boffin, "and cut it short, for we've had enough of you."

"I have borne," said the Secretary, in a low voice, "with my false position here, that I might not be separated from Miss Wilfer. To be near her has been a recompense to me from day to day, even for the undeserved treatment I have had here, and for the degraded aspect in which she has often seen me. Since Miss Wilfer rejected me I have never again urged my suit, to the best of my belief, with a spoken syllable or a look. But I have never changed in my devotion to her, except-if she will forgive my saying so that it is deeper than it was, and better founded."

"Now, mark this chap's saying Miss Wilfer, when he means £ s. d. !" cried Mr. Boffin, with a cunning wink. "Now, mark this chap's making Miss Wilfer stand for Pounds, Shillings, and Pence!"

"My feeling for Miss Wilfer," pursued the Secretary, without deigning to notice him, "is not one to be ashamed of. I avow it. I love her. Let me go where I may when I presently leave this house, I shall go into a blank life, leaving her."

"Leaving £ s. d. behind me," said Mr. Boffin, by way of commentary, with another wink.

"That I am incapable," the Secretary went on, still without heeding him, "of a mercenary project, or a mercenary thought in connection with Miss Wilfer, is nothing meritorious in me, because any prize that I could put before my fancy would sink into insignificance beside her. If the greatest wealth or the highest rank werc

you think, my dear, because I don't want you to cut in, but you can think it all the same. As to taking possession of my property, I warrant you he wouldn't do that himself if he could."

"No," returned the Secretary, with another full look.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Boffin. "There's nothing like a good ’un while you are about it."

"I have been for a moment," said the Secretary, turning from him and falling into his former manner, "diverted from the little I have to say. My interest in Miss Wilfer began when I first saw her; even began when I had only heard of her. It was, in fact, the cause of my throwing myself in Mr. Boffin's way, and entering his service. Miss Wilfer has never known this until now. I mention it now, only as a corroboration (though I hope it may be needless) of my being free from the sordid design attributed to me."

"Now, this is a very artful dog," said Mr. Boffin, with a deep look. "This is a longerheaded schemer than I thought him. See how patiently and methodically he goes to work. He gets to know about me and my property, and about this young lady, and her share in poor young John's story, and he puts this and that together, and he says to himself, 'I'll get in with Boffin, and I'll get in with this young lady, and I'll work 'em both at the same time, and I'll bring my pigs to market somewhere.' I hear him say it, bless you! Why, I look at him now, and I see him say it!"

Mr. Boffin pointed at the culprit, as it were in the act, and hugged himself in his great penetration.

"But luckily he hadn't to deal with the people he supposed, Bella, my dear!" said Mr. Boffin. "No! Luckily he had to deal with you, and with me, and with Daniel and Miss Dancer, and with Elwes, and with Vulture Hopkins, and with Blewbury Jones and all the rest of us, one down t'other come on. And he's beat, that's what he is; regularly beat. He thought to squeeze money out of us, and he has done for himself instead, Bella my dear!"

Bella my dear made no response, gave no sign of acquiescence. When she had first covered her face she had sunk upon a chair with her hands resting on the back of it, and had never moved since. There was a short silence at this point, and Mrs. Boffin softly rose as if to go to her.

But Mr. Boffin stopped her with a gesture, and she obediently sat down again and staid where she was.

"There's your pay, Mister Rokesmith," said the Golden Dustman, jerking the folded scrap of paper he had in his hand toward his late Secretary. "I dare say you can stoop to pick it up, after what you have stooped to here."

"I have stooped to nothing but this," Rokesmith answered, as he took it from the ground; "and this is mine, for I have earned it by the hardest of hard labor."

"You're a pretty quick packer, I hope," said Mr. Boffin; "because the sooner you are gone, bag and baggage, the better for all parties."

"You need have no fear of my lingering." "There's just one thing though," said Mr. Boffin, "that I should like to ask you before we come to a good riddance, if it was only to show this young lady how conceited you schemers are, in thinking that nobody finds out how you contradict yourselves."

"Ask me any thing you wish to ask," returned Rokesmith, "but use the expedition that you recommend."

"You pretend to have a mighty admiration for this young lady?" said Mr. Boffin, laying his hand protectingly on Bella's head without looking down at her.

"How do you reconcile that with this young lady's being a weak-spirited, improvident idiot, not knowing what was due to herself, flinging up her money to the church weather-cocks, and racing off at a splitting pace for the workhouse?"

"I don't understand you."

"Don't you? Or won't you? What else could you have made this young lady out to be, if she had listened to such addresses as yours?" "What else, if I had been so happy as to win her affections and possess her heart?"

"Win her affections," retorted Mr. Boffin, with ineffable contempt, "and possess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack-quack says the duck, Bow-wow-wow says the dog! Win her affections and possess her heart! Mew, Quackquack, Bow-wow!"

John Rokesmith stared at him in his outburst, as if with some faint idea that he had gone mad. "What is due to this young lady," said Mr. Boffin, "is Money, and this young lady right well knows it."

"You slander the young lady."

"You slander the young lady; you with your affections and hearts and trumpery," returned Mr. Boffin. "It's of a piece with the rest of your behavior. I heard of these doings of yours only last night, or you should have heard of 'em from me sooner, take your oath of it. I heard of 'em from a lady with as good a head-piece as

the best, and she knows this young lady, and I know this young lady, and we all three know that it's Money she makes a stand for-money, money, money—and that you and your affections and hearts are a Lie, Sir!"

“Mrs. Boffin," said Rokesmith, quietly turning to her, "for your delicate and unvarying kindness I thank you with the warmest gratitude. Good-by! Miss Wilfer, good-by!"

"And now, my dear," said Mr. Boffin, laying his hand on Bella's head again, "you may begin to make yourself quite comfortable, and I hope you feel that you've been righted."

But Bella was so far from appearing to feel it that she shrank from his hand and from the chair, and, starting up in an incoherent passion of tears, and stretching out her arms, cried, “O Mr. Rokesmith, before you go, if you could but make me poor again! O! make me poor again, Somebody, I beg and pray, or my heart will break if this goes on! Pa, dear, make me poor again and take me home! I was bad enough there, but I have been so much worse here. Don't give me money, Mr. Boffin, I won't have money. Keep it away from me, and only let me speak to good little Pa, and lay my head upon his shoulder, and tell him all my griefs. Nobody else can understand me, nobody else can comfort me, nobody else knows how unworthy I am, and yet can love me like a little child. I am better with Pa than any onemore innocent, more sorry, more glad!" So, crying out in a wild way that she could not bear this, Bella drooped her head on Mrs. Boffin's ready breast.

John Rokesmith from his place in the room, and Mr. Boffin from his, looked on at her in silence until she was silent herself. Then Mr. Boffin observed, in a soothing and comfortable tone, "There, my dear, there; you are righted now, and it's all right. I don't wonder, I'm sure, at your being a little flurried by having a scene with this fellow, but it's all over, my dear, and you're righted, and it's-and it's all right!" Which Mr. Boffin repeated with a highly satisfied air of completeness and finality.

"I hate you!" cried Bella, turning suddenly upon him, with a stamp of her little foot-“ at least, I can't hate you, but I don't like you!"

"HUL-LO!" exclaimed Mr. Boffin, in an amazed under-tone.

"You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature!" cried Bella. "I am angry with my ungrateful self for calling you names; but you are, you are; you know you are!"

Mr. Boffin stared here, and stared there, as misdoubting that he must be in some sort of fit.

"I have heard you with shame," said Bella. "With shame for myself, and with shame for you. You ought to be above the base tale-bearing of a time-serving woman; but you are above nothing now."

Mr. Boffin, seeming to become convinced that

"The best wish I can wish you is," said Bella, returning to the charge, "that you had not one single farthing in the world. If any true friend and well-wisher could make you a bankrupt, you would be a Duck; but as a man of property you are a Demon!"

After dispatching this second bolt with a still greater expenditure of force, Bella laughed and cried still more.

"Mr. Rokesmith, pray stay one moment. Pray hear one word from me before you go! I am deeply sorry for the reproaches you have borne on my account. Out of the depths of my heart I earnestly and truly beg your pardon." As she stepped toward him, he met her. As she gave him her hand, he put it to his lips, and said, "God bless you!" No laughing was mixed with Bella's crying then; her tears were pure and fervent.

"There is not an ungenerous word that I have heard addressed to you-heard with scorn and indignation, Mr. Rokesmith-but it has wounded me far more than you, for I have deserved it, and you never have. Mr. Rokesmith, it is to me you owe this perverted account of what passed between us that night. I parted with the secret, even while I was angry with myself for doing so. It was very bad in me, but indeed it was not wicked. I did it in a moment of conceit and folly-one of my many such moments-one of my many such hours-years. As I am punished for it severely, try to forgive it!"

"I do with all my soul." "Thank you. O thank you! Don't part from me till I have said one other word, to do you justice. The only fault you can be truly charged with, in having spoken to me as you did that night with how much delicacy and how much forbearance no one but I can know or be grateful to you for-is, that you laid yourself open to be slighted by a worldly shallow girl whose head was turned, and who was quite unable to rise to the worth of what you offered her. Mr. Rokesmith, that girl has often seen herself in a pitiful and poor light since, but never in so pitiful and poor a light as now, when the mean tone in which she answered you-sordid and vain girl that she was-has been echoed in her ears by Mr. Boffin."

He kissed her hand again.

"Mr. Boffin's speeches were detestable to me, shocking to me," said Bella, startling that gentleman with another stamp of her little foot. "It is quite true that there was a time, and very

All this time Mr. Boffin had been rolling his eyes over his loosened neckerchief, as if his fit were still upon him. Appearing now to think that he was coming to, he stared straight before him for a while, tied his neckerchief again, took several long inspirations, swallowed several times, and ultimately exclaimed with a deep sigh, as if he felt himself on the whole better: "Well!" No word, good or bad, did Mrs. Boffin say: but she tenderly took care of Bella, and glanced at her husband as if for orders. Mr. Boffin, without imparting any, took his seat on a chair over against them, and there sat leaning forward, with a fixed countenance, his legs apart, a hand on each knee, and his elbows squared, until Bella should dry her eyes and raise her head, which in the fullness of time she did.

"I must go home," said Bella, rising hurriedly. "I am very grateful to you for all you have done for me, but I can't stay here."

"My darling girl!" remonstrated Mrs. Boffin.

"No, I can't stay here," said Bella; "I can't indeed. Ugh! you vicious old thing!" (This to Mr. Boffin.)

"Don't be rash, my love," urged Mrs. Boffin. "Think well of what you do."

"Yes, you had better think well," said Mr. Boffin.

"I shall never more think well of you," cried Bella, cutting him short, with intent defiance in her expressive little eyebrows, and championship of the late Secretary in every dimple. "No! never again! Your money has changed you to marble. You are a hard-hearted Miser. You are worse than Dancer, worse than Hopkins, worse than Blackberry Jones, worse than any of the wretches. And more!" proceeded Bella, breaking into tears again, "you were wholly undeserving of the Gentleman you have lost."

"Why, you don't mean to say, Miss Bella," the Golden Dustman slowly remonstrated, “that you set up Rokesmith against me?"

"I do!" said Bella. "He is worth a Million of you."

Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.

"I would rather he thought well of me," said Bella, "though he swept the street for bread, than that you did, though you splashed the mud