, motherless and friendless as she is, I will awaken it.«
    »You will not,« replied Newman. »You will not, indeed.«
    »Then,« said Nicholas, pressing onward, »I will act upon my first impulse,
and go straight to Ralph Nickleby.«
    »By the time you reach his house he will be in bed,« said Newman.
    »I'll drag him from it,« cried Nicholas.
    »Tut, tut,« said Noggs. »Be yourself.«
    »You are the best of friends to me, Newman,« rejoined Nicholas after a
pause, and taking his hand as he spoke. »I have made head against many trials;
but the misery of another, and such misery, is involved in this one, that I
declare to you I am rendered desperate, and know not how to act.«
    In truth, it did seem a hopeless case. It was impossible to make any use of
such intelligence as Newman Noggs had gleaned, when he lay concealed in the
closet. The mere circumstance of the compact between Ralph Nickleby and Gride
would not invalidate the marriage, or render Bray averse to it, who, if he did
not actually know of the existence of some such understanding, doubtless
suspected it. What had been hinted with reference to some fraud on Madeline, had
been put with sufficient obscurity by Arthur Gride, but coming from Newman
Noggs, and obscured still further by the smoke of his pocket-pistol, it became
wholly unintelligible, and involved in utter darkness.
    »There seems no ray of hope,« said Nicholas.
    »The greater necessity for coolness, for reason, for consideration, for
thought,« said Newman, pausing at every alternate word, to look anxiously in his
friend's face. »Where are the brothers?«
    »Both absent on urgent business, as they will be for a week to come.«
    »Is there no way of communicating with them? No way of getting one of them
here, by to-morrow night?«
    »Impossible!« said Nicholas, »the sea is between us and them. With the
fairest winds that ever blew, to go and return would take three days and
nights.«
    »Their nephew,« said Newman, »their old clerk.«
    »What could either do, that I cannot?« rejoined Nicholas. »With reference to
them especially, I am enjoined to the strictest silence on this subject. What
right have I to betray the confidence reposed in me, when nothing but a
