 together until she turned towards
Danish Street, where Mr. Hyndmarsh retailed his grocery, not far from the
offices of Mr. Wakem.
    That gentleman was not yet come to his office: would Mrs. Tulliver sit down
by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long to wait
before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an examining glance
at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying deferentially: - a tallish man,
with an aquiline nose and abundant iron-grey hair. You have never seen Mr. Wakem
before, and are possibly wondering whether he was really as eminent a rascal,
and as crafty, bitter an enemy of honest humanity in general and or Mr. Tulliver
in particular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of him
which we have seen to exist in the miller's mind.
    It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any chance-shot
that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was liable to entanglements
in this puzzling world, which, due consideration had to his own infallibility,
required the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It
is still possible to believe that the attorney was not more guilty towards him,
than an ingenious machine, which performs its work with much regularity, is
guilty towards the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by some
fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into unexpected mince-meat.
    But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his
person: the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other symbols -
not always easy to read without a key. On an a priori view of Wakem's aquiline
nose, which offended Mr. Tulliver, there was not more rascality than in the
shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though this too, along with his nose, might
have become fraught with damnatory meaning when once the rascality was
ascertained.
    »Mrs. Tulliver, I think?« said Mr. Wakem.
    »Yes, sir. Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was.«
    »Pray be seated. You have some business with me?«
    »Well sir, yes,« said Mrs. Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her own
courage, now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and reflecting
that she had not settled with herself how she should begin. Mr. Wakem felt in
his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence.
    »I hope, sir,« she began at last - »I
