 so amazed.
    »What is he doing?« she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to
consume her like a fire. »In what is that man assisting him, who never looks at
me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? If you are honourable and
faithful, I don't ask you to betray your friend. I ask you only to tell me, is
it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it restlessness, is it some wild fancy,
is it love, what is it, that is leading him?«
    »Miss Dartle,« I returned, »how shall I tell you, so that you will believe
me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what there was when I
first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly believe there is nothing. I
hardly understand even what you mean.«
    As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from
which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and
lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised
its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly - a hand so thin and delicate,
that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had
compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain - and saying, in a quick, fierce,
passionate way, »I swear you to secrecy about this!« said not a word more.
    Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son's society, and Steerforth
was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful to her. It was very
interesting to me to see them together, not only on account of their mutual
affection, but because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the
manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and
sex, in her, to a gracious dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well
no serious cause of division had ever come between them; or two such natures - I
ought rather to express it, two such shades of the same nature - might have been
harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The idea did
not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but in a speech of
Rosa Dartle's.
    She said at dinner:
    »Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking about it
all day, and I want to know.«
    »You want
