Bella.

'I doubt if you ever will. Good-night. Of course I shall be careful to
conceal any traces of this interview from Mr and Mrs Boffin, as long as
I remain here. Trust me, what you have complained of is at an end for
ever.'

'I am glad I have spoken, then, Mr Rokesmith. It has been painful and
difficult, but it is done. If I have hurt you, I hope you will forgive
me. I am inexperienced and impetuous, and I have been a little spoilt;
but I really am not so bad as I dare say I appear, or as you think me.'

He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her wilful
inconsistent way. Left alone, she threw herself back on her ottoman, and
said, 'I didn't know the lovely woman was such a Dragon!' Then, she
got up and looked in the glass, and said to her image, 'You have been
positively swelling your features, you little fool!' Then, she took an
impatient walk to the other end of the room and back, and said, 'I
wish Pa was here to have a talk about an avaricious marriage; but he
is better away, poor dear, for I know I should pull his hair if he WAS
here.' And then she threw her work away, and threw her book after
it, and sat down and hummed a tune, and hummed it out of tune, and
quarrelled with it.

And John Rokesmith, what did he?

He went down to his room, and buried John Harmon many additional fathoms
deep. He took his hat, and walked out, and, as he went to Holloway or
anywhere else--not at all minding where--heaped mounds upon mounds of
earth over John Harmon's grave. His walking did not bring him home until
the dawn of day. And so busy had he been all night, piling and piling
weights upon weights of earth above John Harmon's grave, that by that
time John Harmon lay buried under a whole Alpine range; and still the
Sexton Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour
with the dirge, 'Cover him, crush him, keep him down!'

Chapter 14

STRONG OF PURPOSE

The sexton-task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long, was
not conducive to sound sleep; but Rokesmith had some broken morning
rest, and rose strengthened in his purpose. It was all over now. No
ghost should trouble Mr and Mrs Boffin's peace; invisible and voiceless,
the ghost should look on for a little while longer at the state of
existence out of which it had departed, and then should for ever cease
to haunt the scenes in which it had no place.

He went over it all again. He had lapsed into the condition in whi