old gentleman, who nodded now and then as approving
of Mr Pecksniff's sentences and sentiments, but interposed between them
in no other way.

'From fragments of a conversation which I overheard in the church, just
now, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, 'between yourself and Miss Graham--I say
fragments, because I was slumbering at a considerable distance from you,
when I was roused by your voices--and from what I saw, I ascertained (I
would have given a great deal not to have ascertained, Mr Pinch) that
you, forgetful of all ties of duty and of honour, sir; regardless of the
sacred laws of hospitality, to which you were pledged as an inmate
of this house; have presumed to address Miss Graham with unreturned
professions of attachment and proposals of love.'

Tom looked at him steadily.

'Do you deny it, sir?' asked Mr Pecksniff, dropping one pound two and
fourpence, and making a great business of picking it up again.

'No, sir,' replied Tom. 'I do not.'

'You do not,' said Mr Pecksniff, glancing at the old gentleman. 'Oblige
me by counting this money, Mr Pinch, and putting your name to this
receipt. You do not?'

No, Tom did not. He scorned to deny it. He saw that Mr Pecksniff having
overheard his own disgrace, cared not a jot for sinking lower yet in his
contempt. He saw that he had devised this fiction as the readiest means
of getting rid of him at once, but that it must end in that any way. He
saw that Mr Pecksniff reckoned on his not denying it, because his doing
so and explaining would incense the old man more than ever against
Martin and against Mary; while Pecksniff himself would only have been
mistaken in his 'fragments.' Deny it! No.

'You find the amount correct, do you, Mr Pinch?' said Pecksniff.

'Quite correct, sir,' answered Tom.

'A person is waiting in the kitchen,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'to carry
your luggage wherever you please. We part, Mr Pinch, at once, and are
strangers from this time.'

Something without a name; compassion, sorrow, old tenderness, mistaken
gratitude, habit; none of these, and yet all of them; smote upon Tom's
gentle heart at parting. There was no such soul as Pecksniff's in
that carcase; and yet, though his speaking out had not involved the
compromise of one he loved, he couldn't have denounced the very shape
and figure of the man. Not even then.

'I will not say,' cried Mr Pecksniff, shedding tears, 'what a blow this
is. I will not say how much it tries me; how it works upon m