, was not uncommonly to be met with in old houses.
    The old man sat down in the easy-chair, and after a few moments' silence,
said:
    »In the first place, let me thank you for coming to London so promptly, at
my almost unexplained request: I need scarcely add, at my cost.«
    »At your cost, my good sir!« cried Mr. Pecksniff, in a tone of great
surprise.
    »It is not,« said Martin, waving his hand impatiently, »my habit to put my -
well! my relatives - to any personal expense to gratify my caprices.«
    »Caprices, my good sir!« cried Mr. Pecksniff.
    »That is scarcely the proper word either, in this instance,« said the old
man. »No. You are right.«
    Mr. Pecksniff was inwardly very much relieved to hear it, though he didn't
at all know why.
    »You are right,« repeated Martin. »It is not a caprice. It is built up on
reason, proof, and cool comparison. Caprices never are. Moreover, I am not a
capricious man. I never was.«
    »Most assuredly not,« said Mr. Pecksniff.
    »How do you know?« returned the other quickly. »You are to begin to know it
now. You are to test and prove it, in time to come. You and yours are to find
that I can be constant, and am not to be diverted from my end. Do you hear?«
    »Perfectly,« said Mr. Pecksniff.
    »I very much regret,« Martin resumed, looking steadily at him, and speaking
in a slow and measured tone: »I very much regret that you and I held such a
conversation together, as that which passed between us, at our last meeting. I
very much regret that I laid open to you what were then my thoughts of you, so
freely as I did. The intentions that I bear towards you, now, are of another
kind; deserted by all in whom I have ever trusted; hoodwinked and beset by all
who should help and sustain me; I fly to you for refuge. I confide in you to be
my ally; to attach yourself to me by ties of Interest and Expectation;« he laid
great stress upon these words, though Mr. Pecksniff particularly begged him not
to mention it; »and to help me to visit the consequences of the very worst
species of meanness, dissimulation, and subtlety, on the
