ttachment had occasioned much family grief and
dissension. Of honest Mr Meagles no mention was made; except that it
was natural enough that a person of that sort should wish to raise his
daughter out of his own obscurity, and that no one could blame him for
trying his best to do so.

Little Dorrit's interest in the fair subject of this easily accepted
belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate observation. She
could see that it had its part in throwing upon Mrs Gowan the touch of a
shadow under which she lived, and she even had an instinctive knowledge
that there was not the least truth in it. But it had an influence in
placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs Gowan by making
the Prunes and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very
intimate with her; and Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that
college, was obliged to submit herself humbly to its ordinances.

Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already
established between the two, which would have carried them over
greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more restricted
intercourse. As though accidents were determined to be favourable to
it, they had a new assurance of congeniality in the aversion which each
perceived that the other felt towards Blandois of Paris; an aversion
amounting to the repugnance and horror of a natural antipathy towards an
odious creature of the reptile kind.

And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active
one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and
to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which
they both knew to be different from his bearing towards others. The
difference was too minute in its expression to be perceived by others,
but they knew it to be there. A mere trick of his evil eyes, a mere turn
of his smooth white hand, a mere hair's-breadth of addition to the fall
of his nose and the rise of the moustache in the most frequent movement
of his face, conveyed to both of them, equally, a swagger personal to
themselves. It was as if he had said, 'I have a secret power in this
quarter. I know what I know.'

This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and never
by each so perfectly to the knowledge of the other, as on a day when he
came to Mr Dorrit's to take his leave before quitting Venice. Mrs
Gowan was herself there for the same purpose, and he came upon the
two together; the rest