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Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.

‘I want to say nothing for myself,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,’ she had shrunk away from him, ‘if you don’t feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.’ ‘It has never been attributed to you,’ I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.

‘It was you, if I don’t deceive myself,’ she said, in a broken voice, ‘that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me; didn’t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?’

‘It was,’ said I.

‘I should have been in the river long ago,’ she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, ‘if any wrong to her had been upon my mind. I never could have kept out of it a single winter’s night, if I had not been free of any share in that!’

‘The cause of her flight is too well understood,’ I said. ‘You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,—we know.’

‘Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better heart!’ exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; ‘for she was always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself, knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever from her!’

Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.

‘And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some belonging to our town,’ cried Martha, ‘the bitterest thought in all my mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!’

Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.

‘To have died, would not have been much—what can I say?—-I would have lived!’ she cried. ‘I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets—and to wander about, avoided, in the dark—and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once—I would have done even that, to save her!’

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.

‘What shall I ever do!’ she said, fighting thus with her despair. ‘How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!’ Suddenly she turned to my companion. ‘Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can’t believe—why should you?—-a syllable that comes out of my lips. It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word. I don’t complain. I don’t say she and I are alike—I know there is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her. Oh, don’t think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being what I am, and having ever known her; but don’t think that of me!’

He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.

‘Martha,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen’t know half the change that’s come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely. Well!’ he paused a moment, then went on. ‘You doen’t understand how ‘tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You doen’t understand what ‘tis we has afore us. Listen now!’

His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.

‘If you heerd,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘owt of what passed between Mas’r Davy and me, th’ night when it snew so hard, you know as I have been—wheer not—fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,’ he repeated steadily. ‘Fur she’s more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear afore.’

She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.

‘I have heerd her tell,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you’d had such a friend, you’d have got into a way of being fond of him in course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.’

As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose.

‘Whereby,’ said he, ‘I know, both as she would go to the wureld’s furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would fly to the wureld’s furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she ain’t no call to doubt my love, and doen’t—and doen’t,’ he repeated, with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, ‘there’s shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us.’

I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself, new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature it presented.

‘According to our reckoning,’ he proceeded, ‘Mas’r Davy’s here, and mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to London. We believe—Mas’r Davy, me, and all of us—that you are as innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You’ve spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew she was! I knew she always was, to all. You’re thankful to her, and you love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!’

She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were doubtful of what he had said.

‘Will you trust me?’ she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.