 of continual unhappiness, leading
you to distrust the nearest and dearest, and to dig yourself a living grave of
suspicion and reserve; take heed that, having cast off all whom you might have
bound to you, and tenderly, you do not become in your decay the instrument of
such a man as this, and waken in another world to the knowledge of such wrong,
as would embitter Heaven itself, if wrong or you could ever reach it!«
    And then he told them, how he had sometimes thought, in the beginning, that
love might grow up between Mary and Martin; and how he had pleased his fancy
with the picture of observing it when it was new, and taking them to task,
apart, in counterfeited doubt, and then confessing to them that it had been an
object dear to his heart; and by his sympathy with them, and generous provision
for their young fortunes, establishing a claim on their affection and regard
which nothing should wither, and which should surround his old age with means of
happiness. How in the first dawn of this design, and when the pleasure of such a
scheme for the happiness of others was new and indistinct within him, Martin had
come to tell him that he had already chosen for himself; knowing that he, the
old man, had some faint project on that head, but ignorant whom it concerned.
How it was little comfort to him to know that Martin had chosen Her, because the
grace of his design was lost, and because finding that she had returned his
love, he tortured himself with the reflection that they, so young, to whom he
had been so kind a benefactor, were already like the world, and bent on their
own selfish, stealthy ends. How in the bitterness of this impression, and of his
past experience, he had reproached Martin so harshly (forgetting that he had
never invited his confidence on such a point, and confounding what he had meant
to do with what he had done), that high words sprung up between them, and they
separated in wrath. How he loved him still, and hoped he would return. How on
the night of his illness at the Dragon, he had secretly written tenderly of him,
and made him his heir, and sanctioned his marriage with Mary; and how, after his
interview with Mr. Pecksniff, he had distrusted him again, and burnt the paper
to ashes, and had lain down in his bed distracted by suspicions, doubts, and
regrets.
    And then he told them how, resolved to probe this Pecksniff, and to prove
