ight!'

'I should be a worse man than,--than I hope I am, or would willingly
believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart and
soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret. And
if it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced as I fear he will be,
acting on a determination that there seem to be no means of influencing,
I will assist you to accomplish the design, on which you and John are
jointly resolved.'

She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.

'Harriet,' he said, detaining it in his. 'To speak to you of the worth
of any sacrifice that you can make now--above all, of any sacrifice of
mere money--would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal
to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be,
I feel, not less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great
history, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to
bend my head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes
from a higher and better source of inspiration than my poor worldly
knowledge. I will say only this: I am your faithful steward; and I would
rather be so, and your chosen friend, than I would be anybody in the
world, except yourself.'

She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night. 'Are you
going home?' he said. 'Let me go with you.'

'Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone.
Will you come to-morrow?'

'Well, well,' said he, 'I'll come to-morrow. In the meantime, I'll think
of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I'll think of it, dear
Harriet, and--and--think of me a little in connexion with it.'

He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if
his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as
he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were
creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.

The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it up,
without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and
slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time.
The expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though
monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he
communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: which
was so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain Cuttle's
remedy more than onc