With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie’s touching secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its retraction, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any bearing, near or remote, on such request. “I feel, my dear,” said Bella, quite amazing herself by the businesslike manner in which she was getting on, “that the subject must be a painful one to you, but I am mixed up in it also; for⁠—I don’t know whether you may know it or suspect it⁠—I am the willed-away girl who was to have been married to the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged into it without your consent, and there is very little to choose between us.”

“I had no doubt,” said Lizzie, “that you were the Miss Wilfer I have often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?”

“Unknown friend, my dear?” said Bella.

“Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent me the written paper.”