eyes, there was, in her
case, the faintest gleam of light--a most feeble and sickly ray at the
best of times--but there it was, and it showed the poor girl in a better
and purer aspect than any in which he had looked on human nature yet.

'I wish,' thought Ralph, 'I had never done this. And yet it will
keep this boy to me, while there is money to be made. Selling a
girl--throwing her in the way of temptation, and insult, and coarse
speech. Nearly two thousand pounds profit from him already though.
Pshaw! match-making mothers do the same thing every day.'

He sat down, and told the chances, for and against, on his fingers.

'If I had not put them in the right track today,' thought Ralph, 'this
foolish woman would have done so. Well. If her daughter is as true to
herself as she should be from what I have seen, what harm ensues? A
little teasing, a little humbling, a few tears. Yes,' said Ralph, aloud,
as he locked his iron safe. 'She must take her chance. She must take her
chance.'

CHAPTER 27

Mrs Nickleby becomes acquainted with Messrs Pyke and Pluck, whose
Affection and Interest are beyond all Bounds

Mrs Nickleby had not felt so proud and important for many a day, as
when, on reaching home, she gave herself wholly up to the pleasant
visions which had accompanied her on her way thither. Lady Mulberry
Hawk--that was the prevalent idea. Lady Mulberry Hawk!--On Tuesday last,
at St George's, Hanover Square, by the Right Reverend the Bishop
of Llandaff, Sir Mulberry Hawk, of Mulberry Castle, North Wales, to
Catherine, only daughter of the late Nicholas Nickleby, Esquire, of
Devonshire. 'Upon my word!' cried Mrs Nicholas Nickleby, 'it sounds very
well.'

Having dispatched the ceremony, with its attendant festivities, to the
perfect satisfaction of her own mind, the sanguine mother pictured to
her imagination a long train of honours and distinctions which could
not fail to accompany Kate in her new and brilliant sphere. She would be
presented at court, of course. On the anniversary of her birthday, which
was upon the nineteenth of July ('at ten minutes past three o'clock in
the morning,' thought Mrs Nickleby in a parenthesis, 'for I recollect
asking what o'clock it was'), Sir Mulberry would give a great feast to
all his tenants, and would return them three and a half per cent on the
amount of their last half-year's rent, as would be fully described and
recorded in the fashionable intelligence, to the immeasurabl