nd everything was arranged as if by magic.

Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hour was
over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had marked their
journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them at dinner, but remained
in a separate room. The two other gentlemen hurried in and out with
anxious faces, and, during the short intervals when they were present,
conversed apart. Once, Mrs. Maylie was called away, and after being
absent for nearly an hour, returned with eyes swollen with weeping.
All these things made Rose and Oliver, who were not in any new secrets,
nervous and uncomfortable. They sat wondering, in silence; or, if they
exchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid to
hear the sound of their own voices.

At length, when nine o'clock had come, and they began to think they
were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr. Grimwig entered
the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a man whom Oliver almost
shrieked with surprise to see; for they told him it was his brother,
and it was the same man he had met at the market-town, and seen looking
in with Fagin at the window of his little room. Monks cast a look of
hate, which, even then, he could not dissemble, at the astonished boy,
and sat down near the door. Mr. Brownlow, who had papers in his hand,
walked to a table near which Rose and Oliver were seated.

'This is a painful task,' said he, 'but these declarations, which have
been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be in substance
repeated here. I would have spared you the degradation, but we must
hear them from your own lips before we part, and you know why.'

'Go on,' said the person addressed, turning away his face. 'Quick. I
have almost done enough, I think. Don't keep me here.'

'This child,' said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him, and laying his
hand upon his head, 'is your half-brother; the illegitimate son of your
father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, by poor young Agnes Fleming, who
died in giving him birth.'

'Yes,' said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy: the beating of whose
heart he might have heard. 'That is the bastard child.'

'The term you use,' said Mr. Brownlow, sternly, 'is a reproach to those
long since passed beyond the feeble censure of the world. It reflects
disgrace on no one living, except you who use it. Let that pass. He
was born in this town.'

'In the workhouse of this town,' was the sullen reply. 'Y