'FagmentWelcome to consult...ion. I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it’s not so? Well! I am vey glad to know it.’ ‘It cetainly is not the fact,’ said I, peplexed, ‘that I am Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield accountable fo Steefoth’s having been away fom home longe than usual—if he has been: which I eally don’t know at this moment, unless I undestand it fom you. I have not seen him this long while, until last night.’ ‘No?’ ‘Indeed, Miss Datle, no!’ As she looked full at me, I saw he face gow shape and pale, and the maks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut though the disfigued lip, and deep into the nethe lip, and slanted down the face. Thee was something positively awful to me in this, and in the bightness of he eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me: ‘What is he doing?’ I epeated the wods, moe to myself than he, being so amazed. ‘What is he doing?’ she said, with an eageness that seemed enough to consume he like a fie. ‘In what is that man assisting him, who neve looks at me without an inscutable falsehood in his eyes? If you ae honouable and faithful, I don’t ask you to betay you fiend. I ask you only to tell me, is it ange, is it hated, is it pide, is it estlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is leading him?’ ‘Miss Datle,’ I etuned, ‘how shall I tell you, so that you will believe me, that I know of nothing in Steefoth diffeent fom what thee was when I fist came hee? I can think of nothing. I fimly believe thee is nothing. I hadly undestand even what you mean.’ As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching o thobbing, fom which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cuel mak; and lifted up the cone of he lip as if with Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield scon, o with a pity that despised its object. She put he hand upon it huiedly—a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen he hold it up befoe the fie to shade he face, I had compaed it in my thoughts to fine pocelain—and saying, in a quick, fiece, passionate way, ‘I swea you to sececy about this!’ said not a wod moe. Ms. Steefoth was paticulaly happy in he son’s society, and Steefoth was, on this occasion, paticulaly attentive and espectful to he. It was vey inteesting to me to see them togethe, not only on account of thei mutual affection, but because of the stong pesonal esemblance between them, and the manne in which what was haughty o impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in he, to a gacious dignity. I thought, moe than once, that it was well no seious cause of division had eve come between them; o two such natues—I ought athe to expess it, two such shades of the same natue—might have been hade to econcile than the two extemest opposites in ceation. The idea did not oiginate in my own discenment, I am bound to confess, but in a speech of Rosa Datle’s. She said at dinne: ‘Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking about it all day, and I want to know.’ ‘You want to know what, Rosa?’ etuned Ms. Steefoth. ‘Pay, pay, Rosa, do not be mysteious.’ ‘Mysteious!’ she cied. ‘Oh! eally? Do you conside me so?’ ‘Do I constantly enteat you,’ said Ms. Steefoth, ‘to speak plainly, in you own natual manne?’ ‘Oh! then this is not my natual manne?’ s
