any day?'

'Then you don't care to know?'

'I do not.'

Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with his
former emphasis, 'For I have accidentally--mind!--found out.'

'Wherever she lives,' said Mrs Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated hard
voice, and separating her words as distinctly as if she were reading
them off from separate bits of metal that she took up one by one, 'she
has made a secret of it, and she shall always keep her secret from me.'

'After all, perhaps you would rather not have known the fact, any how?'
said Jeremiah; and he said it with a twist, as if his words had come out
of him in his own wry shape.

'Flintwinch,' said his mistress and partner, flashing into a sudden
energy that made Affery start, 'why do you goad me? Look round this
room. If it is any compensation for my long confinement within these
narrow limits--not that I complain of being afflicted; you know I never
complain of that--if it is any compensation to me for long confinement
to this room, that while I am shut up from all pleasant change I am also
shut up from the knowledge of some things that I may prefer to avoid
knowing, why should you, of all men, grudge me that belief?'

'I don't grudge it to you,' returned Jeremiah.

'Then say no more. Say no more. Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from
me, and do you keep it from me also. Let her come and go, unobserved and
unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let me have what alleviation belongs to
my condition. Is it so much, that you torment me like an evil spirit?'

'I asked you a question. That's all.'

'I have answered it. So, say no more. Say no more.' Here the sound of
the wheeled chair was heard upon the floor, and Affery's bell rang with
a hasty jerk.

More afraid of her husband at the moment than of the mysterious sound in
the kitchen, Affery crept away as lightly and as quickly as she could,
descended the kitchen stairs almost as rapidly as she had ascended them,
resumed her seat before the fire, tucked up her skirt again, and finally
threw her apron over her head. Then the bell rang once more, and then
once more, and then kept on ringing; in despite of which importunate
summons, Affery still sat behind her apron, recovering her breath.

At last Mr Flintwinch came shuffling down the staircase into the
hall, muttering and calling 'Affery woman!' all the way. Affery still
remaining behind her apron, he came stumbling down the kitchen stairs,
candle i