by, if you
please,' said Mrs Wititterly, with a shrillness of tone quite surprising
in so great an invalid. 'I will not be answered, Miss Nickleby. I am not
accustomed to be answered, nor will I permit it for an instant. Do
you hear?' she added, waiting with some apparent inconsistency FOR an
answer.

'I do hear you, ma'am,' replied Kate, 'with surprise--with greater
surprise than I can express.'

'I have always considered you a particularly well-behaved young person
for your station in life,' said Mrs Wititterly; 'and as you are a person
of healthy appearance, and neat in your dress and so forth, I have taken
an interest in you, as I do still, considering that I owe a sort of duty
to that respectable old female, your mother. For these reasons, Miss
Nickleby, I must tell you once for all, and begging you to mind what I
say, that I must insist upon your immediately altering your very forward
behaviour to the gentleman who visit at this house. It really is not
becoming,' said Mrs Wititterly, closing her chaste eyes as she spoke;
'it is improper--quite improper.'

'Oh!' cried Kate, looking upwards and clasping her hands; 'is not this,
is not this, too cruel, too hard to bear! Is it not enough that I should
have suffered as I have, night and day; that I should almost have sunk
in my own estimation from very shame of having been brought into contact
with such people; but must I also be exposed to this unjust and most
unfounded charge!'

'You will have the goodness to recollect, Miss Nickleby,' said Mrs
Wititterly, 'that when you use such terms as "unjust", and "unfounded",
you charge me, in effect, with stating that which is untrue.'

'I do,' said Kate with honest indignation. 'Whether you make this
accusation of yourself, or at the prompting of others, is alike to me. I
say it IS vilely, grossly, wilfully untrue. Is it possible!' cried Kate,
'that anyone of my own sex can have sat by, and not have seen the misery
these men have caused me? Is it possible that you, ma'am, can have been
present, and failed to mark the insulting freedom that their every look
bespoke? Is it possible that you can have avoided seeing, that these
libertines, in their utter disrespect for you, and utter disregard
of all gentlemanly behaviour, and almost of decency, have had but one
object in introducing themselves here, and that the furtherance of their
designs upon a friendless, helpless girl, who, without this humiliating
confession, might h