whom Marie
still had her arm, shuddered as she heard this. 'But I never will
yield a bit for that. When he boxes and thumps me I always turn and
gnash my teeth at him. Can you wonder that I want to have a friend?
Can you be surprised that I should be always thinking of my lover?
But,--if he doesn't love me, what am I to do then?'

'I don't know what I am to say,' ejaculated Hetta amidst her sobs.
Whether the girl was good or bad, to be sought or to be avoided, there
was so much tragedy in her position that Hetta's heart was melted with
sympathy.

'I wonder whether you love anybody, and whether he loves you,' said
Marie. Hetta certainly had not come there to talk of her own affairs,
and made no reply to this. 'I suppose you won't tell me about
yourself.'

'I wish I could tell you something for your own comfort.'

'He will not try again, you think?'

'I am sure he will not.'

'I wonder what he fears. I should fear nothing,--nothing. Why should
not we walk out of the house, and be married any way? Nobody has a
right to stop me. Papa could only turn me out of his house. I will
venture if he will.'

It seemed to Hetta that even listening to such a proposition amounted
to falsehood,--to that guilt of which Mr Melmotte had dared to suppose
that she could be capable. 'I cannot listen to it. Indeed I cannot
listen to it. My brother is sure that he cannot--cannot--'

'Cannot love me, Hetta! Say it out, if it is true.'

'It is true,' said Hetta. There came over the face of the other girl a
stern hard look, as though she had resolved at the moment to throw
away from her all soft womanly things. And she relaxed her hold on
Hetta's waist. 'Oh, my dear, I do not mean to be cruel, but you ask me
for the truth.'

'Yes; I did.'

'Men are not, I think, like girls.'

'I suppose not,' said Marie slowly. 'What liars they are, what
brutes;--what wretches! Why should he tell me lies like that? Why
should he break my heart? That other man never said that he loved me.
Did he never love me,--once?'

Hetta could hardly say that her brother was incapable of such love as
Marie expected, but she knew that it was so. 'It is better that you
should think of him no more.'

'Are you like that? If you had loved a man and told him of it, and
agreed to be his wife and done as I have, could you bear to be told to
think of him no more,--just as though you had got rid of a servant or a
horse? I won't love him. No;--I'll hate him. But I must