I dare say I shall say it wrong, but I
won't if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr and Mrs
Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is.'

With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie's touching
secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its
retraction, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any
bearing, near or remote, on such request. 'I feel, my dear,' said Bella,
quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which she was
getting on, 'that the subject must be a painful one to you, but I
am mixed up in it also; for--I don't know whether you may know it or
suspect it--I am the willed-away girl who was to have been married to
the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So
I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged
into it without your consent, and there is very little to choose between
us.'

'I had no doubt,' said Lizzie, 'that you were the Miss Wilfer I have
often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?'

'Unknown friend, my dear?' said Bella.

'Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent
me the written paper.'

Bella had never heard of him. Had no notion who he was.

'I should have been glad to thank him,' returned Lizzie. 'He has done a
great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me thank him some day.
You asked me has it anything to do--'

'It or the accusation itself,' Bella put in.

'Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite secret and
retired here? No.'

As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her glance
sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded hands, not
lost on Bella's bright eyes.

'Have you lived much alone?' asked Bella.

'Yes. It's nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many hours
together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was alive.'

'You have a brother, I have been told?'

'I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good
boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don't complain of
him.'

As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire-glow, there was an
instantaneous escape of distress into her face. Bella seized the moment
to touch her hand.

'Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of your
own sex and age.'

'I have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never