'Not for your father?'
'Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He thinks so.'
'It is enough if he only thinks so,' said the Secretary. 'Excuse the interruption: I don't like to hear you depreciate yourself.'
'But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,' thought Bella, pouting, 'and Ihope you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon your head!' However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even said something to a different purpose.
'Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally, that I am embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin.
You know I am very grateful to him; don't you? You know I feel a true respect for him, and am bound to him by the strong ties of his own generosity; now don't you?'
'Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.'
'That makes it,' said Bella, 'so very difficult to speak of him. But--.
Does he treat you well?'
'You see how he treats me,' the Secretary answered, with a patient and yet proud air.
'Yes, and I see it with pain,' said Bella, very energetically.
The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked her a hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look said.
'I see it with pain,' repeated Bella, 'and it often makes me miserable. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to approve of it, or have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because Icannot bear to be forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling Mr Boffin.'
'Miss Wilfer,' said the Secretary, with a beaming face, 'if you could know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn't spoiling YOU, you would know that it more than compensates me for any slight at any other hands.'
'Oh, don't speak of ME,' said Bella, giving herself an impatient little slap with her glove. 'You don't know me as well as--'
'As you know yourself?' suggested the Secretary, finding that she stopped. 'DO you know yourself?'
'I know quite enough of myself,' said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, 'and I don't improve upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.'
'That Mr Boffin's manner to me, or consideration for me, is not what it used to be,' observed the Secretary, 'must be admitted. It is too plain to be denied.'
'Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?' asked Bella, with a look of wonder.
'Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for my own sake?'
'Truly,' returned Bella, 'it must try you very much, and--you must please promise me that you won't take ill what I am going to add, Mr Rokesmith?'
'I promise it with all my heart.'
'--And it must sometimes, I should think,' said Bella, hesitating, 'a little lower you in your own estimation?'
Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking as if it did, the Secretary replied:
'I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the drawbacks of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe that they are not all mercenary, although I have, through a series of strange fatalities, faded out of my place in life. If what you see with such a gracious and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my pride, there are other considerations (and those you do not see)urging me to quiet endurance. The latter are by far the stronger.'
'I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, looking at him with curiosity, as not quite making him out, 'that you repress yourself, and force yourself, to act a passive part.'
'You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.'
'And a good one, I hope,' said Bella.
'And a good one, I hope,' he answered, looking steadily at her.
'Sometimes I have fancied, sir,' said Bella, turning away her eyes, 'that your great regard for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive with you.'
'You are right again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear anything for her. There are no words to express how I esteem that good, good woman.'
'As I do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr Rokesmith?'
'Anything more.'
'Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr Boffin shows how he is changing?'
'I see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her pain.'
'To give her pain?' said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her eyebrows raised.
'I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.'
'Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best of men, in spite of all.'
'I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him, saying so to you,' returned the Secretary, with the same steady look, 'but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.'
Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was moralizing on Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a bad job, as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.
But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were bare of leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky was not bare of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a delicious wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply.
Perhaps the old mirror was never yet made by human hands, which, if all the images it has in its time reflected could pass across its surface again, would fail to reveal some scene of horror or distress. But the great serene mirror of the river seemed as if it might have reproduced all it had ever reflected between those placid banks, and brought nothing to the light save what was peaceful, pastoral, and blooming.
