efore him with vicious counter-jerks of his own elbows, Mr
Flintwinch had got back into his corner, where he now stood with his
hands in his pockets, taking breath, and returning Mrs Clennam's stare.
'Ha, ha, ha! But what's this?' cried Rigaud. 'It appears as if you
don't know, one the other. Permit me, Madame Clennam who suppresses, to
present Monsieur Flintwinch who intrigues.'

Mr Flintwinch, unpocketing one of his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced
a step or so in that attitude, still returning Mrs Clennam's look, and
thus addressed her:

'Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at me, but you
needn't take the trouble, because I don't care for it. I've been telling
you for how many years that you're one of the most opinionated and
obstinate of women. That's what YOU are. You call yourself humble and
sinful, but you are the most Bumptious of your sex. That's what YOU are.
I have told you, over and over again when we have had a tiff, that you
wanted to make everything go down before you, but I wouldn't go down
before you--that you wanted to swallow up everybody alive, but I
wouldn't be swallowed up alive. Why didn't you destroy the paper when
you first laid hands upon it?

I advised you to; but no, it's not your way to take advice. You must
keep it forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it out at some other time,
forsooth. As if I didn't know better than that! I think I see your pride
carrying it out, with a chance of being suspected of having kept it by
you. But that's the way you cheat yourself. Just as you cheat yourself
into making out that you didn't do all this business because you were a
rigorous woman, all slight, and spite, and power, and unforgiveness, but
because you were a servant and a minister, and were appointed to do it.
Who are you, that you should be appointed to do it? That may be your
religion, but it's my gammon. And to tell you all the truth while I
am about it,' said Mr Flintwinch, crossing his arms, and becoming the
express image of irascible doggedness, 'I have been rasped--rasped these
forty years--by your taking such high ground even with me, who knows
better; the effect of it being coolly to put me on low ground. I admire
you very much; you are a woman of strong head and great talent; but
the strongest head, and the greatest talent, can't rasp a man for forty
years without making him sore. So I don't care for your present eyes.
Now, I am coming to the paper, and mark what I say. Yo