Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and this prospect as she might have been. Somehow, when she put her arms round Mrs. Boffin’s neck and said good night, she derived a sense of unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good woman and her obvious wish to excuse her husband. “Why, what need to excuse him?” thought Bella, sitting down in her own room. “What he said was very sensible, I am sure, and very true, I am sure. It is only what I often say to myself. Don’t I like it then? No, I don’t like it, and, though he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him for it. Then pray,” said Bella, sternly putting the question to herself in the looking-glass as usual, “what do you mean by this, you inconsistent little beast?”

The looking-glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when thus called upon for explanation, Bella went to bed with a weariness upon her spirit which was more than the weariness of want of sleep. And again in the morning, she looked for the cloud, and for the deepening of the cloud, upon the Golden Dustman’s face.