uld, with submission, take
his leave. He did not go without being congratulated by Amy, as well
as she could discharge that office in the flutter and distress of her
spirits.

When he was gone, she said, 'O Fanny, Fanny!' and turned to her sister
in the bright window, and fell upon her bosom and cried there. Fanny
laughed at first; but soon laid her face against her sister's and cried
too--a little. It was the last time Fanny ever showed that there was any
hidden, suppressed, or conquered feeling in her on the matter. From that
hour the way she had chosen lay before her, and she trod it with her own
imperious self-willed step.

CHAPTER 15. No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons
should not be joined together

Mr Dorrit, on being informed by his elder daughter that she had accepted
matrimonial overtures from Mr Sparkler, to whom she had plighted her
troth, received the communication at once with great dignity and with a
large display of parental pride; his dignity dilating with the widened
prospect of advantageous ground from which to make acquaintances, and
his parental pride being developed by Miss Fanny's ready sympathy with
that great object of his existence. He gave her to understand that her
noble ambition found harmonious echoes in his heart; and bestowed
his blessing on her, as a child brimful of duty and good principle,
self-devoted to the aggrandisement of the family name.

To Mr Sparkler, when Miss Fanny permitted him to appear, Mr Dorrit said,
he would not disguise that the alliance Mr Sparkler did him the honour
to propose was highly congenial to his feelings; both as being in unison
with the spontaneous affections of his daughter Fanny, and as opening
a family connection of a gratifying nature with Mr Merdle, the
master spirit of the age. Mrs Merdle also, as a leading lady rich in
distinction, elegance, grace, and beauty, he mentioned in very laudatory
terms. He felt it his duty to remark (he was sure a gentleman of Mr
Sparkler's fine sense would interpret him with all delicacy), that he
could not consider this proposal definitely determined on, until he
should have had the privilege of holding some correspondence with Mr
Merdle; and of ascertaining it to be so far accordant with the views
of that eminent gentleman as that his (Mr Dorrit's) daughter would be
received on that footing which her station in life and her dowry and
expectations warranted him in requiring that she should main