"I wouldn't deceive you you know," whined Arthur Gride; "I couldn't do it, I should be mad to try. I—I—to deceive Mr. Nickleby! The pigmy to impose upon the giant. I ask again—he, he, he!—what should you say to me if I was to tell you that I was going to be married?"
"To some old hag?" said Ralph.
"No, no," cried Arthur, interrupting him, and rubbing his hands in an ecstacy. "Wrong, wrong again. Mr. Nickleby for once at fault—out, quite out! To a young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely, bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes—long eyelashes—ripe and ruddy lips that to look at is to long to kiss—beautiful clustering hair that one's fingers itch to play with—such a waist as might make a man clasp the air involuntarily, thinking of twining his arm about it—little feet that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk upon the ground—to marry all this, sir,—this—hey, hey!"
"This is something more than common drivelling," said Ralph, after listening with a curled lip to the old sinner's raptures. "The girl's name?"
"Oh deep, deep ! See now how deep that is!" exclaimed old Arthur. "He knows I want his help, he knows he can give it me, he knows it must all turn to his advantage, he sees the thing already. Her name—is there nobody within hearing?"
"Why, who the devil should there be?" retorted Ralph, testily.
"I didn't know but that perhaps somebody might be passing up or down the stairs," said Arthur Gride, after looking out at the door and carefully re-closing it; "or but that your man might have come back and might have been listening outside—clerks and servants have a trick of listening, and I should have been very uncomfortable if Mr. Noggs—"
"Curse Mr. Noggs," said Ralph, sharply, "and go on with what you have to say."
"Curse Mr. Noggs, by all means," rejoined old Arthur; "I am sure I have not the least objection to that. Her name is—"
"Well," said Ralph, rendered very irritable by old Arthur's pausing again, "what is it?"
"Madeline Bray."
Whatever reasons there might have been—and Arthur Gride appeared to have anticipated some—for the mention of this name producing an effect upon Ralph, or whatever effect it really did produce upon him, he permitted none to manifest itself, but calmly repeated the name several times, as if reflecting when and where he had heard it before.
"Bray," said Ralph. "Bray—there was young Bray of no, he never had a daughter."
"You remember Bray?" rejoined Arthur Gride.
"No," said Ralph, looking vacantly at him.
"Not Walter Bray! The dashing man, who used his handsome wife so ill?"
"If you seek to recal any particular dashing man to my recollection
