“Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,” continued Tom coolly, “because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my getting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at home was like staying in jail⁠—especially when I was gone. It wasn’t as if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good thing in her.”

“Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.”

“Oh,” returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, “she’s a regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and she don’t mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she’s not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and think⁠—as I have often known her sit and watch the fire⁠—for an hour at a stretch.”

“Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,” said Harthouse, smoking quietly.