me interrupt
you, sir.'

'Then, you see, my good fellow,' said the single gentleman, 'that while
we have no doubt whatever of the truth of this disclosure, which has so
providentially come to light--'

'Meaning hers?' said Dick, pointing towards the Marchioness.

'--Meaning hers, of course. While we have no doubt of that, or that a
proper use of it would procure the poor lad's immediate pardon and
liberation, we have a great doubt whether it would, by itself, enable
us to reach Quilp, the chief agent in this villany. I should tell you
that this doubt has been confirmed into something very nearly
approaching certainty by the best opinions we have been enabled, in
this short space of time, to take upon the subject. You'll agree with
us, that to give him even the most distant chance of escape, if we
could help it, would be monstrous. You say with us, no doubt, if
somebody must escape, let it be any one but he.'

'Yes,' returned Dick, 'certainly. That is if somebody must--but upon
my word, I'm unwilling that Anybody should. Since laws were made for
every degree, to curb vice in others as well as in me--and so forth
you know--doesn't it strike you in that light?'

The single gentleman smiled as if the light in which Mr Swiveller had
put the question were not the clearest in the world, and proceeded to
explain that they contemplated proceeding by stratagem in the first
instance; and that their design was to endeavour to extort a confession
from the gentle Sarah.

'When she finds how much we know, and how we know it,' he said, 'and
that she is clearly compromised already, we are not without strong
hopes that we may be enabled through her means to punish the other two
effectually. If we could do that, she might go scot-free for aught I
cared.'

Dick received this project in anything but a gracious manner,
representing with as much warmth as he was then capable of showing,
that they would find the old buck (meaning Sarah) more difficult to
manage than Quilp himself--that, for any tampering, terrifying, or
cajolery, she was a very unpromising and unyielding subject--that she
was of a kind of brass not easily melted or moulded into shape--in
short, that they were no match for her, and would be signally defeated.
But it was in vain to urge them to adopt some other course. The single
gentleman has been described as explaining their joint intentions, but
it should have been written that they all spoke together; that