Neither could Bella, so she found the subject rather interesting.

'He takes more care of my affairs, morning, noon, and night,' said Mr Boffin, 'than fifty other men put together either could or would; and yet he has ways of his own that are like tying a scaffolding-pole right across the road, and bringing me up short when I am almost a-walking arm in arm with him.'

'May I ask how so, sir?' inquired Bella.

'Well, my dear,' said Mr Boffin, 'he won't meet any company here, but you. When we have visitors, I should wish him to have his regular place at the table like ourselves; but no, he won't take it.'

'If he considers himself above it,' said Miss Bella, with an airy toss of her head, 'I should leave him alone.'

'It ain't that, my dear,' replied Mr Boffin, thinking it over. 'He don't consider himself above it.'

'Perhaps he considers himself beneath it,' suggested Bella. 'If so, he ought to know best.'

'No, my dear; nor it ain't that, neither. No,' repeated Mr Boffin, with a shake of his head, after again thinking it over; 'Rokesmith's a modest man, but he don't consider himself beneath it.'

'Then what does he consider, sir?' asked Bella.

'Dashed if I know!' said Mr Boffin. 'It seemed that first as if it was only Lightwood that he objected to meet. And now it seems to be everybody, except you.'

Oho! thought Miss Bella. 'In--deed! That's it, is it!' For Mr Mortimer Lightwood had dined there two or three times, and she had met him elsewhere, and he had shown her some attention. 'Rather cool in a Secretary--and Pa's lodger--to make me the subject of his jealousy!'

That Pa's daughter should be so contemptuous of Pa's lodger was odd; but there were odder anomalies than that in the mind of the spoilt girl: spoilt first by poverty, and then by wealth. Be it this history's part, however, to leave them to unravel themselves.

'A little too much, I think,' Miss Bella reflected scornfully, 'to have Pa's lodger laying claim to me, and keeping eligible people off! A little too much, indeed, to have the opportunities opened to me by Mr and Mrs Boffin, appropriated by a mere Secretary and Pa's lodger!'

Yet it was not so very long ago that Bella had been fluttered by the discovery that this same Secretary and lodger seem to like her. Ah! but the eminently aristocratic mansion and Mrs Boffin's dressmaker had not come into play then.

In spite of his seemingly retiring manners a very intrusive person, this Secretary and lodger, in Miss Bella's opinion. Always a light in his office-room when we came home from the play or Opera, and he always at the carriage-door to hand us out. Always a provoking radiance too on Mrs Boffin's face, and an abominably cheerful reception of him, as if it were possible seriously to approve what the man had in his mind!

'You never charge me, Miss Wilfer,' said the Secretary, encountering her by chance alone in the great drawing-room, 'with commissions for home. I shall always be happy to execute any commands you may have in that direction.'

'Pray what may you mean, Mr Rokesmith?' inquired Miss Bella, with languidly drooping eyelids.

'By home? I mean your father's house at Holloway.