.
    »Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when I am
wrong,« said Rosa Dartle. »You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?«
    »Well,« I replied; »perhaps it was a little dry.«
    »Oh! and that's a reason why you want relief and change - excitement, and
all that?« said she. »Ah! very true! But isn't it a little - Eh? - for him; I
don't mean you?«
    A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking,
with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond that, I
was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.
    »Don't it - I don't say that it does, mind I want to know - don't it rather
engross him? Don't it make him, perhaps, a, little more remiss than usual in his
visits to his blindly-doting - eh?« With another quick glance at them, and such
a glance at me as seemed to look into my innermost thoughts.
    »Miss Dartle,« I returned, »pray do not think -«
    »I don't!« she said. »Oh dear me, don't suppose that I think anything! I am
not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don't state any opinion. I want to
found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it's not so? Well! I am very glad to
know it.«
    »It certainly is not the fact,« said I, perplexed, »that I am accountable
for Steerforth's having been away from home longer than usual - if he has been;
which I really don't know at this moment, unless I understand it from you. I
have not seen him this long while, until last night.«
    »No?«
    »Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!«
    As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler, and the
marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through the disfigured lip, and
deep into the nether lip, and slanted down the face. There was something
positively awful to me in this, and in the brightness of her eyes, as she said,
looking fixedly at me:
    »What is he doing?«
    I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being
