He was going out
of the way, on what he had been able to scrape up, and a trifle from me.
He was here that early Monday morning, waiting for the tide; in short,
he was going to Antwerp, where (I am afraid you'll be shocked at
my saying, And be damned to him!) he made the acquaintance of this
gentleman. He had come a long way, and, I thought then, was only sleepy;
but, I suppose now, was drunk. When Arthur's mother had been under
the care of him and his wife, she had been always writing, incessantly
writing,--mostly letters of confession to you, and Prayers for
forgiveness. My brother had handed, from time to time, lots of these
sheets to me. I thought I might as well keep them to myself as have them
swallowed up alive too; so I kept them in a box, looking over them when
I felt in the humour. Convinced that it was advisable to get the paper
out of the place, with Arthur coming about it, I put it into this same
box, and I locked the whole up with two locks, and I trusted it to my
brother to take away and keep, till I should write about it. I did write
about it, and never got an answer. I didn't know what to make of it,
till this gentleman favoured us with his first visit. Of course, I began
to suspect how it was, then; and I don't want his word for it now to
understand how he gets his knowledge from my papers, and your paper, and
my brother's cognac and tobacco talk (I wish he'd had to gag himself).
Now, I have only one thing more to say, you hammer-headed woman, and
that is, that I haven't altogether made up my mind whether I might, or
might not, have ever given you any trouble about the codicil. I think
not; and that I should have been quite satisfied with knowing I had got
the better of you, and that I held the power over you. In the present
state of circumstances, I have no more explanation to give you till
this time to-morrow night. So you may as well,' said Mr Flintwinch,
terminating his oration with a screw, 'keep your eyes open at somebody
else, for it's no use keeping 'em open at me.'

She slowly withdrew them when he had ceased, and dropped her forehead
on her hand. Her other hand pressed hard upon the table, and again the
curious stir was observable in her, as if she were going to rise.

'This box can never bring, elsewhere, the price it will bring here.

This knowledge can never be of the same profit to you, sold to any other
person, as sold to me. But I have not the present means of raising the
sum you hav