this paper all that is known of him.'

He handed her one of the printed bills, which she read with a steady and
attentive face.

'This is more than I knew of him,' she said, giving it back.

Clennam's looks expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his
incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: 'You don't
believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that
there was personal communication between him and your mother. And yet
you say you believe her declaration that she knows no more of him!'

A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these words,
and in the smile by which they were accompanied, to bring the blood into
Clennam's cheeks.

'Come, sir,' she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab, 'I
will be as open with you as you can desire. I will confess that if I
cared for my credit (which I do not), or had a good name to preserve
(which I have not, for I am utterly indifferent to its being considered
good or bad), I should regard myself as heavily compromised by having
had anything to do with this fellow. Yet he never passed in at MY
door--never sat in colloquy with ME until midnight.'

She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject
against him. Hers was not the nature to spare him, and she had no
compunction.

'That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling about
Italy (where I was, not long ago), and that I hired him there, as the
suitable instrument of a purpose I happened to have; I have no objection
to tell you. In short, it was worth my while, for my own pleasure--the
gratification of a strong feeling--to pay a spy who would fetch and
carry for money. I paid this creature. And I dare say that if I had
wanted to make such a bargain, and if I could have paid him enough, and
if he could have done it in the dark, free from all risk, he would have
taken any life with as little scruple as he took my money. That, at
least, is my opinion of him; and I see it is not very far removed from
yours. Your mother's opinion of him, I am to assume (following your
example of assuming this and that), was vastly different.'

'My mother, let me remind you,' said Clennam, 'was first brought into
communication with him in the unlucky course of business.'

'It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last brought
her into communication with him,' returned Miss Wade; 'and business
hours on that occasion were