 same
private man out of all the men alive, was in the mind of each at the same
moment; was prominently connected, though in a different manner, with the day's
adventures of both; and formed, when they passed each other in the street, the
one absorbing topic of their thoughts.
    Why Tom had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his mind requires no explanation. Why Mr.
Nadgett should have had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his, is quite another thing.
    But, somehow or other, that amiable and worthy orphan had become a part of
the mystery of Mr. Nadgett's existence. Mr. Nadgett took an interest in his
lightest proceedings; and it never flagged or wavered. He watched him in and out
of the Assurance Office, where he was now formally installed as a Director; he
dogged his footsteps in the streets; he stood listening when he talked; he sat
in coffee-rooms entering his name in the great pocket-book, over and over again;
he wrote letters to himself about him constantly; and, when he found them in his
pocket, put them in the fire, with such distrust and caution that he would bend
down to watch the crumpled tinder while it floated upward, as if his mind
misgave him, that the mystery it had contained might come out at the
chimney-pot.
    And yet all this was quite a secret. Mr. Nadgett kept it to himself, and
kept it close. Jonas had no more idea that Mr. Nadgett's eyes were fixed on him,
than he had that he was living under the daily inspection and report of a whole
order of Jesuits. Indeed Mr. Nadgett's eyes were seldom fixed on any other
objects than the ground, the clock, or the fire; but every button on his coat
might have been an eye: he saw so much.
    The secret manner of the man disarmed suspicion in this wise; suggesting,
not that he was watching any one, but that he thought some other man was
watching him. He went about so stealthily, and kept himself so wrapped up in
himself, that the whole object of his life appeared to be, to avoid notice and
preserve his own mystery. Jonas sometimes saw him in the street, hovering in the
outer office, waiting at the door for the man who never came, or slinking off
with his immoveable face and drooping head, and the one beaver glove dangling
before him; but he would as soon have thought of the cross upon the top of St.
Paul's Cathedral taking note of what he did, or slowly
