g?' inquired Ralph, with as much stolidity of
face, as if he really were in utter ignorance of the other's meaning.

'This marriage,' answered Bray. 'Don't ask me what. You know as well as
I do.'

Ralph shrugged his shoulders, in silent deprecation of Bray's
impatience, and elevated his eyebrows, and pursed his lips, as men do
when they are prepared with a sufficient answer to some remark, but wait
for a more favourable opportunity of advancing it, or think it scarcely
worth while to answer their adversary at all.

'Look at him. Does it not seem cruel?' said Bray.

'No!' replied Ralph, boldly.

'I say it does,' retorted Bray, with a show of much irritation. 'It is a
cruel thing, by all that's bad and treacherous!'

When men are about to commit, or to sanction the commission of some
injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object
either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at
the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those
who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above
works, and is very comfortable. To do Ralph Nickleby justice, he seldom
practised this sort of dissimulation; but he understood those who
did, and therefore suffered Bray to say, again and again, with great
vehemence, that they were jointly doing a very cruel thing, before he
again offered to interpose a word.

'You see what a dry, shrivelled, withered old chip it is,' returned
Ralph, when the other was at length silent. 'If he were younger, it
might be cruel, but as it is--harkee, Mr Bray, he'll die soon, and leave
her a rich young widow! Miss Madeline consults your tastes this time;
let her consult her own next.'

'True, true,' said Bray, biting his nails, and plainly very ill at ease.
'I couldn't do anything better for her than advise her to accept these
proposals, could I? Now, I ask you, Nickleby, as a man of the world;
could I?'

'Surely not,' answered Ralph. 'I tell you what, sir; there are a hundred
fathers, within a circuit of five miles from this place; well off; good,
rich, substantial men; who would gladly give their daughters, and their
own ears with them, to that very man yonder, ape and mummy as he looks.'

'So there are!' exclaimed Bray, eagerly catching at anything which
seemed a justification of himself. 'And so I told her, both last night
and today.'

'You told her truth,' said Ralph, 'and did well to do so; though I
must say, at the s