Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/72

 46 OUtt MUTUAL FRIEND.

ridiculous enough to have a stranger coming over to marry me, whether he liked it or not. It was ridiculous enough to know what an embarrassing meeting it would be, and how we never could pretend to have an inclination of our own, either of us. It was ridiculous enough to know I shouldn't like him how could I like him, left to him in a will, like a dozen of spoons, with everything cut and dried beforehand, like orange chips ? Talk of orange flowers indeed ! I declare again it's a shame ! Those ridiculous points would have been smoothed away by the money, for I love money, and want money want it dreadfully. I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor, offensively poor, miserably poor, beastly poor. But here I am, left with all the ridiculous parts of the situation remaining, and added to them all, this ridiculous dress ! And if the truth was known, when the Harmon murder was all over the town, and people were speculating on its being suicide, I dare say those impudent wretches at the clubs and places made jokes about the miserable creature's having preferred a watery grave to me. It's likely enough they took such liberties; I shouldn't wonder ! I declare it's a very hard case indeed, and I am a most unfortunate girl. The idea of being a kind of widow, and never having been married ! And the idea of being as poor as ever after all, and going into black, besides, for a man I never saw, and should have hated as far as he was concerned if I had seen ! "

The young lady's lamentations were choked at this point by a knuckle, knocking at the half-open door of the room. The knuckle had knocked two or three times already, but had not been heard.

"Who is it?" said Mrs. Wilfer, in her Act-of-Parliament manner. " Enter ! "

A gentleman coming in, Miss Bella, with a short and sharp exclamation, scrambled off the hearth-rug and massed the bitten curls together in their right place on her neck.

" The servant girl had her key in the door as I came up,