it seems that there was personal
communication between him and your mother. And yet you say you believe her
declaration that she knows no more of him!«
    A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these words, and
in the smile by which they were accompanied, to bring the blood into Clennam's
cheeks.
    »Come, sir,« she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab, »I will
be as open with you as you can desire. I will confess that if I cared for my
credit (which I do not), or had a good name to preserve (which I have not, for I
am utterly indifferent to its being considered good or bad), I should regard
myself as heavily compromised by having had anything to do with this fellow. Yet
he never passed in at my door - never sat in colloquy with me until midnight.«
    She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject against
him. Hers was not the nature to spare him, and she had no compunction.
    »That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling about
Italy (where I was, not long ago), and that I hired him there, as the suitable
instrument of a purpose I happened to have; I have no objection to tell you. In
short, it was worth my while, for my own pleasure - the gratification of a
strong feeling - to pay a spy who would fetch and carry for money. I paid this
creature. And I dare say that if I had wanted to make such a bargain, and if I
could have paid him enough, and if he could have done it in the dark, free from
all risk, he would have taken any life with as little scruple as he took my
money. That, at least, is my opinion of him; and I see it is not very far
removed from yours. Your mother's opinion of him, I am to assume (following your
example of assuming this and that), was vastly different.«
    »My mother, let me remind you,« said Clennam, »was first brought into
communication with him in the unlucky course of business.«
    »It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last brought her
into communication with him,« returned Miss Wade; »and business hours on that
occasion were late.«
    »You imply,« said Arthur, smarting under these cool-handed thrusts, of which
he had deeply felt the force already, »that there was something