has often seen herself in a pitiful and poor light since, but never in so pitiful and poor a light as now, when the mean tone in which she answered you—sordid and vain girl that she was—has been echoed in her ears by Mr. Boffin.”
He kissed her hand again.
“ Mr. Boffin’s speeches were detestable to me, shocking to me,” said Bella, startling that gentleman with another stamp of her little foot. “It is quite true that there was a time, and very lately, when I deserved to be so ‘righted,’ Mr. Rokesmith; but I hope that I shall never deserve it again!”
He once more put her hand to his lips, and then relinquished it, and left the room. Bella was hurrying back to the chair in which she had hidden her face so long, when, catching sight of Mrs. Boffin by the way, she stopped at her. “He is gone,” sobbed Bella indignantly, despairingly, in fifty ways at once, with her arms round Mrs. Boffin’s neck. “He has been most shamefully abused, and most unjustly and most basely driven away, and I am the cause of it!”