“When I speak of my sister, I devoutly wish that you had never seen her, Mr. Headstone. However, you did see her, and that’s useless now. I confided in you about her. I explained her character to you, and how she interposed some ridiculous fanciful notions in the way of our being as respectable as I tried for. You fell in love with her, and I favoured you with all my might. She could not be induced to favour you, and so we came into collision with this Mr. Eugene Wrayburn. Now, what have you done? Why, you have justified my sister in being firmly set against you from first to last, and you have put me in the wrong again! And why have you done it? Because, Mr. Headstone, you are in all your passions so selfish, and so concentrated upon yourself that you have not bestowed one proper thought on me.”

The cool conviction with which the boy took up and held his position, could have been derived from no other vice in human nature.