They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor’s arm and went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and passed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother’s shoulder again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the garden.

“Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.”

They had stopped among a disorder of roses⁠—it was part of Mr. Bounderby’s humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced scale⁠—and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his powerful familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.

“Tom, what’s the matter?”