, pointing towards the Marchioness.
    »- Meaning hers, of course. While we have no doubt of that, or that a proper
use of it would procure the poor lad's immediate pardon and liberation, we have
a great doubt whether it would, by itself, enable us to reach Quilp, the chief
agent in this villany. I should tell you that this doubt has been confirmed into
something very nearly approaching certainty by the best opinions we have been
enabled, in this short space of time, to take upon the subject. You'll agree
with us, that to give him even the most distant chance of escape, if we could
help it, would be monstrous. You say with us, no doubt, if somebody must escape,
let it be any one but he.«
    »Yes,« returned Dick, »certainly. That is if somebody must - but upon my
word, I'm unwilling that anybody should. Since laws were made for every degree,
to curb vice in others as well as in me - and so forth you know - doesn't it
strike you in that light?«
    The single gentleman smiled as if the light in which Mr. Swiveller had put
the question were not the clearest in the world, and proceeded to explain that
they contemplated proceeding by stratagem in the first instance; and that their
design was to endeavour to extort a confession from the gentle Sarah.
    »When she finds how much we know, and how we know it,« he said, »and that
she is clearly compromised already, we are not without strong hopes that we may
be enabled through her means to punish the other two effectually. If we could do
that, she might go scot-free for aught I cared.«
    Dick received this project in anything but a gracious manner, representing
with as much warmth as he was then capable of showing, that they would find the
old buck (meaning Sarah) more difficult to manage than Quilp himself - that, for
any tampering, terrifying, or cajolery, she was a very unpromising and
unyielding subject - that, she was of a kind of brass not easily melted or
moulded into shape - in short, that they were no match for her, and would be
signally defeated. But, it was in vain to urge them to adopt some other course.
The single gentleman has been described as explaining their joint intentions,
but it should have been written that they all spoke together; that if any one of
them by chance held his peace for a moment, he stood gasping and panting for
