“Where were you,” said the boy, advancing a step as he lowered his voice, “when it was done? Stop! I don’t ask that. Don’t tell me. If you force your confidence upon me, Mr. Headstone, I’ll give up every word of it. Mind! Take notice. I’ll give up it, and I’ll give up you. I will!”

The wretched creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renunciation. A desolate air of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him, like a visible shade.

“It’s for me to speak, not you,” said the boy. “If you do, you’ll do it at your peril. I am going to put your selfishness before you, Mr. Headstone⁠—your passionate, violent, and ungovernable selfishness⁠—to show you why I can, and why I will, have nothing more to do with you.”

He looked at young Hexam as if he were waiting for a scholar to go on with a lesson that he knew by heart and was deadly tired of. But he had said his last word to him.