f the draught from the door. If he made any such
suggestion, he would expose himself, he feared, to most unjust
suspicion. He would, therefore, content himself with remarking that
there was an easy-chair in the room, and that the door was far from
being air-tight. This latter imperfection, he might perhaps venture to
add, was not uncommonly to be met with in old houses.

The old man sat down in the easy-chair, and after a few moments'
silence, said:

'In the first place, let me thank you for coming to London so promptly,
at my almost unexplained request; I need scarcely add, at my cost.'

'At YOUR cost, my good sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff, in a tone of great
surprise.

'It is not,' said Martin, waving his hand impatiently, 'my habit to put
my--well! my relatives--to any personal expense to gratify my caprices.'

'Caprices, my good sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff

'That is scarcely the proper word either, in this instance,' said the
old man. 'No. You are right.'

Mr Pecksniff was inwardly very much relieved to hear it, though he
didn't at all know why.

'You are right,' repeated Martin. 'It is not a caprice. It is built up
on reason, proof, and cool comparison. Caprices never are. Moreover, I
am not a capricious man. I never was.'

'Most assuredly not,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'How do you know?' returned the other quickly. 'You are to begin to know
it now. You are to test and prove it, in time to come. You and yours are
to find that I can be constant, and am not to be diverted from my end.
Do you hear?'

'Perfectly,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'I very much regret,' Martin resumed, looking steadily at him, and
speaking in a slow and measured tone; 'I very much regret that you and
I held such a conversation together, as that which passed between us at
our last meeting. I very much regret that I laid open to you what were
then my thoughts of you, so freely as I did. The intentions that I bear
towards you now are of another kind; deserted by all in whom I have ever
trusted; hoodwinked and beset by all who should help and sustain me;
I fly to you for refuge. I confide in you to be my ally; to attach
yourself to me by ties of Interest and Expectation'--he laid great
stress upon these words, though Mr Pecksniff particularly begged him
not to mention it; 'and to help me to visit the consequences of the very
worst species of meanness, dissimulation, and subtlety, on the right
heads.'

'My noble sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff, catching at h