prompt:
Chapter: Left alone, with the expressive looks and gestures of Mr Baptist,
        otherwise Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam
        entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he tried to control his
        attention by directing it to any business occupation or train of
        thought; it rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would hold to no
        other idea. As though a criminal should be chained in a stationary boat
        on a deep clear river, condemned, whatever countless leagues of water
        flowed past him, always to see the body of the fellow-creature he had
        drowned lying at the bottom, immovable, and unchangeable, except as
        the eddies made it broad or long, now expanding, now contracting
        its terrible lineaments; so Arthur, below the shifting current of
        transparent thoughts and fancies which were gone and succeeded by others
        as soon as come, saw, steady and dark, and not to be stirred from its
        place, the one subject that he endeavoured with all his might to rid
        himself of, and that he could not fly from.

        The assurance he now had, that Blandois, whatever his right name, was
        one of the worst of characters, greatly augmented the burden of his
        anxieties. Though the disappearance should be accounted for to-morrow,
        the fact that his mother had been in communication with such a man,
        would remain unalterable. That the communication had been of a secret
        kind, and that she had been submissive to him and afraid of him, he
        hoped might be known to no one beyond himself; yet, knowing it, how
        could he separate it from his old vague fears, and how believe that
        there was nothing evil in such relations?

        Her resolution not to enter on the question with him, and his knowledge
        of her indomitable character, enhanced his sense of helplessness. It was
        like the oppression of a dream to believe that shame and exposure were
        impending over her and his father's memory, and to be shut out, as by a
        brazen wall, from the possibility of coming to their aid. The purpose he
        had brought home to his native country, and had ever since kept in view,
        was, with her greatest determination, defeated by his mother herself, at
        the time of all others when he feared that it pressed most. His advice,
        energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever, were all
        made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and
        had turned those who looked upon her into stone, she could not have
        rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his
                distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to
        his in her gloomy room.

        But the light of that day's discovery, shining on these considerations,
        roused him to take a more decided course of action. Confident in the
        rectitude of his purpose, and impelled by a sense of overhanging danger
        closing in around, he resolved, if his mother would still admit of no
        approach, to make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she could be brought
        to become communicative, and to do what lay in her to break the spell of
        secrecy that enshrouded the house, he might shake off the paralysis of
        which every hour that passed over his head made him more acutely
        sensible. This was the result of his day's anxiety, and this was the
        decision he put in practice when the day closed in.

        His first disappointment, on arriving at the house, was to find the door
        open, and Mr Flintwinch smoking a pipe on the steps. If circumstances
        had been commonly favourable, Mistress Affery would have opened the
        door to his knock. Circumstances being uncommonly unfavourable, the door
        stood open, and Mr Flintwinch was smoking his pipe on the steps.

        'Good evening,' said Arthur.

        'Good evening,' said Mr Flintwinch.

        The smoke came crookedly out of Mr Flintwinch's mouth, as if it
        circulated through the whole of his wry figure and came back by his wry
        throat, before coming forth to mingle with the smoke from the crooked
        chimneys and the mists from the crooked river.

        'Have you any news?' said Arthur.

        'We have no news,' said Jeremiah.

        'I mean of the foreign man,' Arthur explained.

        '_I_ mean of the foreign man,' said Jeremiah.

        He looked so grim, as he stood askew, with the knot of his cravat under
        his ear, that the thought passed into Clennam's mind, and not for the
        first time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own have got
        rid of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that
        were at issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong;
        yet he was as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw.
        Such a man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and
        having the will to put an end to him and no relenting, might do it
        pretty surely in that solitary place at a late hour.

        While, in the morbid condition of his thoughts, these thoughts drifted
        over the main one that was always in Clennam's mind, Mr Flintwinch,
        regarding the opposite house over the gateway with his neck twisted and
        one eye shut up, stood smoking with a vicious expression upon him; more
        as if he were trying to bite off the stem of his pipe, than as if he
        were enjoying it. Yet he was enjoying it in his own way.

        'You'll be able to take my likeness, the next time you call, Arthur,
        I should think,' said Mr Flintwinch, drily, as he stooped to knock the
        ashes out.

        Rather conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared
        at him unpolitely. 'But my mind runs so much upon this matter,' he said,
        'that I lose myself.'

        'Hah! Yet I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, quite at his leisure,
        'why it should trouble _you_, Arthur.'

        'No?'

        'No,' said Mr Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were
        of the canine race, and snapped at Arthur's hand.

        'Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to
        see my mother's name and residence hawked up and down in such an
        association?'

        'I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, 'that
        it need signify much to you. But I'll tell you what I do see, Arthur,'
        glancing up at the windows; 'I see the light of fire and candle in your
        mother's room!'

        'And what has that to do with it?'

        'Why, sir, I read by it,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself at him,
        'that if it's advisable (as the proverb says it is) to let sleeping dogs
        lie, it's just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let 'em
        be. They generally turn up soon enough.'

        Mr Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went
        into the dark hall. Clennam stood there, following him with his eyes,
        as he dipped for a light in the phosphorus-box in the little room at the
        side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against
        the wall. All the while, Clennam was pursuing the probabilities--rather
        as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he
        himself were conjuring them up--of Mr Flintwinch's ways and means of
        doing that darker deed, and removing its traces by any of the black
        avenues of shadow that lay around them.

        'Now, sir,' said the testy Jeremiah; 'will it be agreeable to walk
        up-stairs?'

        'My mother is alone, I suppose?'

        'Not alone,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Mr Casby and his daughter are with
        her. They came in while I was smoking, and I stayed behind to have my
        smoke out.'

        This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and
        repaired to his mother's room, where Mr Casby and Flora had been
        taking tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those
        delicacies were not yet removed, either from the table or from the
        scorched countenance of Affery, who, with the kitchen toasting-fork
        still in her hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except
        that she had a considerable advantage over the general run of such
        personages in point of significant emblematical purpose.

        Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care
        indicative of an intention to stay some time. Mr Casby, too, was beaming
        near the hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of
        the toast were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face
        as ruddy as if the colouring matter of the anchovy paste were mantling
        in the patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the
        usual salutations, Clennam decided to speak to his mother without
        postponement.

        It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who
        had anything to say to her apart, to wheel her to her desk; where she
        sat, usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the
        room, and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool
        which was always set in that place for that purpose. Except that it
        was long since the mother and son had spoken together without the
        intervention of a third person, it was an ordinary matter of course
        within the experience of visitors for Mrs Clennam to be asked, with a
        word of apology for the interruption, if she could be spoken with on
        a matter of business, and, on her replying in the affirmative, to be
        wheeled into the position described.

        Therefore, when Arthur now made such an apology, and such a request,
        and moved her to her desk and seated himself on the stool, Mrs Finching
        merely began to talk louder and faster, as a delicate hint that she
        could overhear nothing, and Mr Casby stroked his long white locks with
        sleepy calmness.

        'Mother, I have heard something to-day which I feel persuaded you don't
        know, and which I think you should know, of the antecedents of that man
        I saw here.'

        'I know nothing of the antecedents of the man you saw here, Arthur.'

        She spoke aloud. He had lowered his own voice; but she rejected that
        advance towards confidence as she rejected every other, and spoke in her
        usual key and in her usual stern voice.

        'I have received it on no circuitous information; it has come to me
        direct.'

        She asked him, exactly as before, if he were there to tell her what it
        was?

        'I thought it right that you should know it.'

        'And what is it?'

        'He has been a prisoner in a French gaol.'

        She answered with composure, 'I should think that very likely.'

        'But in a gaol for criminals, mother. On an accusation of murder.'

        She started at the word, and her looks expressed her natural horror. Yet
        she still spoke aloud, when she demanded:--

        'Who told you so?'

        'A man who was his fellow-prisoner.'

        'That man's antecedents, I suppose, were not known to you, before he
        told you?'

        'No.'

        'Though the man himself was?'

        'Yes.'

        'My case and Flintwinch's, in respect of this other man! I dare say the
        resemblance is not so exact, though, as that your informant became known
        to you through a letter from a correspondent with whom he had deposited
        money? How does that part of the parallel stand?'

        Arthur had no choice but to say that his informant had not become known
        to him through the agency of any such credentials, or indeed of any
        credentials at all. Mrs Clennam's attentive frown expanded by degrees
        into a severe look of triumph, and she retorted with emphasis, 'Take
        care how you judge others, then. I say to you, Arthur, for your good,
        take care how you judge!'

        Her emphasis had been derived from her eyes quite as much as from the
        stress she laid upon her words. She continued to look at him; and if,
        when he entered the house, he had had any latent hope of prevailing in
        the least with her, she now looked it out of his heart.

        'Mother, shall I do nothing to assist you?'

        'Nothing.'

        'Will you entrust me with no confidence, no charge, no explanation?
        Will you take no counsel with me? Will you not let me come near you?'

        'How can you ask me? You separated yourself from my affairs. It was not
        my act; it was yours. How can you consistently ask me such a question?
        You know that you left me to Flintwinch, and that he occupies your
        place.'

        Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw in his very gaiters that his attention
        was closely directed to them, though he stood leaning against the wall
        scraping his jaw, and pretended to listen to Flora as she held forth in
        a most distracting manner on a chaos of subjects, in which mackerel, and
        Mr F.'s Aunt in a swing, had become entangled with cockchafers and the
        wine trade.

        'A prisoner, in a French gaol, on an accusation of murder,' repeated
        Mrs Clennam, steadily going over what her son had said. 'That is all you
        know of him from the fellow-prisoner?'

        'In substance, all.'

        'And was the fellow-prisoner his accomplice and a murderer, too? But, of
        course, he gives a better account of himself than of his friend; it is
        needless to ask. This will supply the rest of them here with something
        new to talk about. Casby, Arthur tells me--'

        'Stay, mother! Stay, stay!' He interrupted her hastily, for it had not
        entered his imagination that she would openly proclaim what he had told
        her.

        'What now?' she said with displeasure. 'What more?'

        'I beg you to excuse me, Mr Casby--and you, too, Mrs Finching--for one
        other moment with my mother--'

        He had laid his hand upon her chair, or she would otherwise have wheeled
        it round with the touch of her foot upon the ground. They were still
        face to face. She looked at him, as he ran over the possibilities of
        some result he had not intended, and could not foresee, being influenced
        by Cavalletto's disclosure becoming a matter of notoriety, and hurriedly
        arrived at the conclusion that it had best not be talked about; though
        perhaps he was guided by no more distinct reason than that he had taken
        it for granted that his mother would reserve it to herself and her
        partner.

        'What now?' she said again, impatiently. 'What is it?'

        'I did not mean, mother, that you should repeat what I have
        communicated. I think you had better not repeat it.'

        'Do you make that a condition with me?'

        'Well! Yes.'

        'Observe, then! It is you who make this a secret,' said she, holding
        up her hand, 'and not I. It is you, Arthur, who bring here doubts and
        suspicions and entreaties for explanations, and it is you, Arthur, who
        bring secrets here. What is it to me, do you think, where the man has
        been, or what he has been? What can it be to me? The whole world may
        know it, if they care to know it; it is nothing to me. Now, let me go.'

        He yielded to her imperious but elated look, and turned her chair back
        to the place from which he had wheeled it. In doing so he saw elation
        in the face of Mr Flintwinch, which most assuredly was not inspired by
        Flora. This turning of his intelligence and of his whole attempt and
        design against himself, did even more than his mother's fixedness and
        firmness to convince him that his efforts with her were idle. Nothing
        remained but the appeal to his old friend Affery.

        But even to get the very doubtful and preliminary stage of making the
        appeal, seemed one of the least promising of human undertakings. She
        was so completely under the thrall of the two clever ones, was so
        systematically kept in sight by one or other of them, and was so afraid
        to go about the house besides, that every opportunity of speaking to her
        alone appeared to be forestalled. Over and above that, Mistress Affery,
        by some means (it was not very difficult to guess, through the sharp
                arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction
        of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had
        remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with
        that symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had
        been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch
        himself, she had warded off conversation with the toasting-fork like a
        dumb woman.

        After several abortive attempts to get Affery to look at him while
        she cleared the table and washed the tea-service, Arthur thought of an
        expedient which Flora might originate. To whom he therefore whispered,
        'Could you say you would like to go through the house?'

        Now, poor Flora, being always in fluctuating expectation of the time
        when Clennam would renew his boyhood and be madly in love with her
        again, received the whisper with the utmost delight; not only as
        rendered precious by its mysterious character, but as preparing the
        way for a tender interview in which he would declare the state of his
        affections. She immediately began to work out the hint.

        'Ah dear me the poor old room,' said Flora, glancing round, 'looks just
        as ever Mrs Clennam I am touched to see except for being smokier which
        was to be expected with time and which we must all expect and reconcile
        ourselves to being whether we like it or not as I am sure I have had to
        do myself if not exactly smokier dreadfully stouter which is the same or
        worse, to think of the days when papa used to bring me here the least of
        girls a perfect mass of chilblains to be stuck upon a chair with my feet
        on the rails and stare at Arthur--pray excuse me--Mr Clennam--the
        least of boys in the frightfullest of frills and jackets ere yet Mr
        F. appeared a misty shadow on the horizon paying attentions like the
        well-known spectre of some place in Germany beginning with a B is a
        moral lesson inculcating that all the paths in life are similar to the
        paths down in the North of England where they get the coals and make the
        iron and things gravelled with ashes!'

        Having paid the tribute of a sigh to the instability of human existence,
        Flora hurried on with her purpose.

        'Not that at any time,' she proceeded, 'its worst enemy could have said
        it was a cheerful house for that it was never made to be but always
        highly impressive, fond memory recalls an occasion in youth ere yet the
        judgment was mature when Arthur--confirmed habit--Mr Clennam--took
        me down into an unused kitchen eminent for mouldiness and proposed to
        secrete me there for life and feed me on what he could hide from his
        meals when he was not at home for the holidays and on dry bread in
        disgrace which at that halcyon period too frequently occurred, would
        it be inconvenient or asking too much to beg to be permitted to revive
        those scenes and walk through the house?'

        Mrs Clennam, who responded with a constrained grace to Mrs Finching's
        good nature in being there at all, though her visit (before Arthur's
                unexpected arrival) was undoubtedly an act of pure good nature and no
        self-gratification, intimated that all the house was open to her. Flora
        rose and looked to Arthur for his escort. 'Certainly,' said he, aloud;
        'and Affery will light us, I dare say.'

        Affery was excusing herself with 'Don't ask nothing of me, Arthur!' when
        Mr Flintwinch stopped her with 'Why not? Affery, what's the matter with
        you, woman? Why not, jade!' Thus expostulated with, she came unwillingly
        out of her corner, resigned the toasting-fork into one of her husband's
        hands, and took the candlestick he offered from the other.

        'Go before, you fool!' said Jeremiah. 'Are you going up, or down, Mrs
        Finching?'

        Flora answered, 'Down.'

        'Then go before, and down, you Affery,' said Jeremiah. 'And do it
        properly, or I'll come rolling down the banisters, and tumbling over
        you!'

        Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no
        intention of leaving them. Clennam looking back, and seeing him
        following three stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical
        manner exclaimed in a low voice, 'Is there no getting rid of him!' Flora
        reassured his mind by replying promptly, 'Why though not exactly
        proper Arthur and a thing I couldn't think of before a younger man or
        a stranger still I don't mind him if you so particularly wish it and
        provided you'll have the goodness not to take me too tight.'

        Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he meant,
        Arthur extended his supporting arm round Flora's figure. 'Oh my goodness
        me,' said she. 'You are very obedient indeed really and it's extremely
        honourable and gentlemanly in you I am sure but still at the same time
        if you would like to be a little tighter than that I shouldn't consider
        it intruding.'

        In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his anxious
        mind, Clennam descended to the basement of the house; finding that
        wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became heavier, and
        that when the house was lightest she was too. Returning from the dismal
        kitchen regions, which were as dreary as they could be, Mistress Affery
        passed with the light into his father's old room, and then into the old
        dining-room; always passing on before like a phantom that was not to be
        overtaken, and neither turning nor answering when he whispered, 'Affery!
        I want to speak to you!'

        In the dining-room, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look into
        the dragon closet which had so often swallowed Arthur in the days of his
        boyhood--not improbably because, as a very dark closet, it was a likely
        place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into despair, had opened
        it, when a knock was heard at the outer door.

        Mistress Affery, with a suppressed cry, threw her apron over her head.

        'What? You want another dose!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'You shall have it,
        my woman, you shall have a good one! Oh! You shall have a sneezer, you
        shall have a teaser!'

        'In the meantime is anybody going to the door?' said Arthur.

        'In the meantime, _I_ am going to the door, sir,' returned the old man so
        savagely, as to render it clear that in a choice of difficulties he felt
        he must go, though he would have preferred not to go. 'Stay here the
        while, all! Affery, my woman, move an inch, or speak a word in your
        foolishness, and I'll treble your dose!'

        The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some
        difficulty, by reason of that lady misunderstanding his intentions, and
        making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of slackening.

        'Affery, speak to me now!'

        'Don't touch me, Arthur!' she cried, shrinking from him. 'Don't come
        near me. He'll see you. Jeremiah will. Don't.'

        'He can't see me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word, 'if
        I blow the candle out.'

        'He'll hear you,' cried Affery.

        'He can't hear me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the words
        again, 'if I draw you into this black closet, and speak here. Why do
        you hide your face?'

        'Because I am afraid of seeing something.'

        'You can't be afraid of seeing anything in this darkness, Affery.'

        'Yes I am. Much more than if it was light.'

        'Why are you afraid?'

        'Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it's full
        of whisperings and counsellings; because it's full of noises. There
        never was such a house for noises. I shall die of 'em, if Jeremiah don't
        strangle me first. As I expect he will.'

        'I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.'

        'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged
        to go about it as I am,' said Affery; 'and you'd feel that they was so
        well worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh bursting through
        not being allowed to speak of 'em. Here's Jeremiah! You'll get me
        killed.'

        'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of
        the open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if you would
        uncover your face and look.'

        'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm always
        blind-folded when Jeremiah an't a looking, and sometimes even when he
        is.'

        'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You are
        as safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.'

        ('I wish he was!' cried Affery.)

        'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown
        on the secrets of this house.'

        'I tell you, Arthur,' she interrupted, 'noises is the secrets, rustlings
        and stealings about, tremblings, treads overhead and treads underneath.'

        'But those are not all the secrets.'

        'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old sweetheart
        an't far off, and she's a blabber.'

        His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then
        reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of
        forty-five degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with
        greater earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she heard
        should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on no other
        account on Arthur's--sensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce
        and Clennam's.'

        'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few
        agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother's sake, for your
        husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me
        something connected with the coming here of this man, if you will.'

        'Why, then I'll tell you, Arthur,' returned Affery--'Jeremiah's coming!'

        'No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing outside,
        talking.'

        'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first time
        he ever come he heard the noises his own self. "What's that?" he said to
        me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching hold of him,
        "but I have heard it over and over again." While I says it, he stands a
        looking at me, all of a shake, he do.'

        'Has he been here often?'

        'Only that night, and the last night.'

        'What did you see of him on the last night, after I was gone?'

        'Them two clever ones had him all alone to themselves. Jeremiah come
        a dancing at me sideways, after I had let you out (he always comes a
                dancing at me sideways when he's going to hurt me), and he said to me,
        "Now, Affery," he said, "I am a coming behind you, my woman, and a going
        to run you up." So he took and squeezed the back of my neck in his hand,
        till it made me open my mouth, and then he pushed me before him to bed,
        squeezing all the way. That's what he calls running me up, he do. Oh,
        he's a wicked one!'

        'And did you hear or see no more, Affery?'

        'Don't I tell you I was sent to bed, Arthur! Here he is!'

        'I assure you he is still at the door. Those whisperings and
        counsellings, Affery, that you have spoken of. What are they?'

        'How should I know? Don't ask me nothing about 'em, Arthur. Get away!'

        'But my dear Affery; unless I can gain some insight into these hidden
        things, in spite of your husband and in spite of my mother, ruin will
        come of it.'

        'Don't ask me nothing,' repeated Affery. 'I have been in a dream for
        ever so long. Go away, go away!'

        'You said that before,' returned Arthur. 'You used the same expression
        that night, at the door, when I asked you what was going on here. What
        do you mean by being in a dream?'

        'I an't a going to tell you. Get away! I shouldn't tell you, if you was
        by yourself; much less with your old sweetheart here.'

        It was equally vain for Arthur to entreat, and for Flora to protest.
        Affery, who had been trembling and struggling the whole time, turned a
        deaf ear to all adjuration, and was bent on forcing herself out of the
        closet.

        'I'd sooner scream to Jeremiah than say another word! I'll call out to
        him, Arthur, if you don't give over speaking to me. Now here's the very
        last word I'll say afore I call to him--If ever you begin to get the
        better of them two clever ones your own self (you ought to it, as I told
                you when you first come home, for you haven't been a living here long
                years, to be made afeared of your life as I have), then do you get the
        better of 'em afore my face; and then do you say to me, Affery tell your
        dreams! Maybe, then I'll tell 'em!'

        The shutting of the door stopped Arthur from replying. They glided into
        the places where Jeremiah had left them; and Clennam, stepping forward
        as that old gentleman returned, informed him that he had accidentally
        extinguished the candle. Mr Flintwinch looked on as he re-lighted it at
        the lamp in the hall, and preserved a profound taciturnity respecting
        the person who had been holding him in conversation. Perhaps his
        irascibility demanded compensation for some tediousness that the visitor
        had expended on him; however that was, he took such umbrage at seeing
        his wife with her apron over her head, that he charged at her, and
        taking her veiled nose between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw
        the whole screw-power of his person into the wring he gave it.

        Flora, now permanently heavy, did not release Arthur from the survey of
        the house, until it had extended even to his old garret bedchamber. His
        thoughts were otherwise occupied than with the tour of inspection; yet
        he took particular notice at the time, as he afterwards had occasion to
        remember, of the airlessness and closeness of the house; that they left
        the track of their footsteps in the dust on the upper floors; and that
        there was a resistance to the opening of one room door, which occasioned
        Affery to cry out that somebody was hiding inside, and to continue to
        believe so, though somebody was sought and not discovered. When they at
        last returned to his mother's room, they found her shading her face
        with her muffled hand, and talking in a low voice to the Patriarch as he
        stood before the fire, whose blue eyes, polished head, and silken locks,
        turning towards them as they came in, imparted an inestimable value and
        inexhaustible love of his species to his remark:

        'So you have been seeing the premises, seeing the premises--premises--
        seeing the premises!'

        It was not in itself a jewel of benevolence or wisdom, yet he made it an
        exemplar of both that one would have liked to have a copy of.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Arthur can't let the Blandois thing go. Why on earth is his mother dealing with this guy? He decides to investigate and goes to his mother's house to speak to Affery. Flintwinch is at the door, which is too bad, because obviously he won't get anything out of him. Flintwinch is none too friendly, says they've had no news, and tells Arthur to mind his own business. Arthur goes upstairs, but Mrs. Clennam is not alone - Flora and Casby are there visiting. Arthur is disappointed but decides to talk to mommy alone anyway. He asks her about Blandois and tells her he was in jail on suspicion of murder. Mrs. Clennam seems to kind of flinch at this but keeps herself as cold as ever and tells Arthur that she doesn't know or care about any of it. She also wonders if this is reliable information. Arthur tells her about Mr. Baptist and how he used to be a prisoner too. Mrs. Clennam starts to tell this bit of news to Flora and Casby, but Arthur stops her and asks her to keep Mr. Baptist's past a secret. And so his mom wins this round and starts in on how it's really Arthur who wants to keep secrets, and look at him keeping secrets when no one else has any. Arthur is defeated by this. His next stratagem is to try again to talk to Affery, and he whispers to Flora to ask for a tour of the house. She's totally psyched, thinking Arthur is about to propose, and immediately makes the tour happen. Affery carries the light for them... but Flintwinch comes along too. Dang. Finally, a piece of luck - someone is at the door. Flintwinch goes to answer it and, after much cajoling, Arthur begs Affery to tell him something - anything. Mostly, she just tells him about the noises she keeps hearing in the house, and that Blandois heard the noise too when he visited. Arthur has noticed how decrepit and dusty the house is. He begs Affery to tell him more, but she is terrified of being beaten by Flintwinch . She's scared of Mrs. Clennam too. She tells Arthur that if he ever gets the upper hand in a conversation with the two of them in front of Affery, she'll tell him what she knows. They finish the tour, get back to Mrs. Clennam's room, and Arthur returns Flora to her father.


prompt:
Chapter: That illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle, continued
his shining course. It began to be widely understood that one who had
done society the admirable service of making so much money out of it,
     could not be suffered to remain a commoner. A baronetcy was spoken of
     with confidence; a peerage was frequently mentioned. Rumour had it
     that Mr Merdle had set his golden face against a baronetcy; that he had
     plainly intimated to Lord Decimus that a baronetcy was not enough
     for him; that he had said, 'No--a Peerage, or plain Merdle.' This was
     reported to have plunged Lord Decimus as nigh to his noble chin in a
     slough of doubts as so lofty a person could be sunk. For the Barnacles,
     as a group of themselves in creation, had an idea that such distinctions
     belonged to them; and that when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became
    ennobled, they let him in, as it were, by an act of condescension, at
the family door, and immediately shut it again. Not only (said Rumour)
    had the troubled Decimus his own hereditary part in this impression, but
    he also knew of several Barnacle claims already on the file, which came
    into collision with that of the master spirit. Right or wrong, Rumour
    was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he was, or was supposed to be, in
    stately excogitation of the difficulty, lent her some countenance by
    taking, on several public occasions, one of those elephantine trots of
    his through a jungle of overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on
    his trunk as Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of England, Elasticity,
    Credit, Capital, Prosperity, and all manner of blessings.

    So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three
    months had passed unnoticed since the two English brothers had been laid
    in one tomb in the strangers' cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs Sparkler were
    established in their own house: a little mansion, rather of the Tite
    Barnacle class, quite a triumph of inconvenience, with a perpetual smell
    in it of the day before yesterday's soup and coach-horses, but extremely
    dear, as being exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this
    enviable abode (and envied it really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler
    had intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom, when
    active hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier with
    his tidings of death. Mrs Sparkler, who was not unfeeling, had received
    them with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted twelve hours;
    after which, she had arisen to see about her mourning, and to take every
    precaution that could ensure its being as becoming as Mrs Merdle's. A
    gloom was then cast over more than one distinguished family (according
            to the politest sources of intelligence), and the Courier went back
    again.

    Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast over
    them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It was a hot
    summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of the habitable
    globe, at all times stuffed and close as if it had an incurable cold in
    its head, was that evening particularly stifling. The bells of the
    churches had done their worst in the way of clanging among the
    unmelodious echoes of the streets, and the lighted windows of the
    churches had ceased to be yellow in the grey dusk, and had died out
    opaque black. Mrs Sparkler, lying on her sofa, looking through an open
    window at the opposite side of a narrow street over boxes of mignonette
    and flowers, was tired of the view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at another
    window where her husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view.
    Mrs Sparkler, looking at herself in her mourning, was even tired of that
    view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other two.

    'It's like lying in a well,' said Mrs Sparkler, changing her position
    fretfully. 'Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say, why don't you
    say it?'

    Mr Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have
    nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented
    himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of his
    wife's couch.

    'Good gracious, Edmund!' said Mrs Sparkler more fretfully still, 'you are
    absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don't!'

    Mr Sparkler, in absence of mind--perhaps in a more literal absence of
    mind than is usually understood by the phrase--had smelt so hard at a
    sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He
    smiled, said, 'I ask your pardon, my dear,' and threw it out of window.

    'You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,' said Mrs
    Sparkler, raising her eyes to him after another minute; 'you look so
    aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.'

    'Certainly, my dear,' said Mr Sparkler, and took a chair on the same
    spot.

    'If I didn't know that the longest day was past,' said Fanny, yawning in
    a dreary manner, 'I should have felt certain this was the longest day. I
    never did experience such a day.'

    'Is that your fan, my love?' asked Mr Sparkler, picking up one and
    presenting it.

    'Edmund,' returned his wife, more wearily yet, 'don't ask weak
    questions, I entreat you not. Whose can it be but mine?'

    'Yes, I thought it was yours,' said Mr Sparkler.

    'Then you shouldn't ask,' retorted Fanny. After a little while she
    turned on her sofa and exclaimed, 'Dear me, dear me, there never was
    such a long day as this!' After another little while, she got up slowly,
    walked about, and came back again.

    'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler, flashing with an original conception, 'I
    think you must have got the fidgets.'

    'Oh, Fidgets!' repeated Mrs Sparkler. 'Don't.'

    'My adorable girl,' urged Mr Sparkler, 'try your aromatic vinegar. I
    have often seen my mother try it, and it seemingly refreshed her.

    And she is, as I believe you are aware, a remarkably fine woman, with no
    non--'

    'Good Gracious!' exclaimed Fanny, starting up again. 'It's beyond all
    patience! This is the most wearisome day that ever did dawn upon the
    world, I am certain.'

    Mr Sparkler looked meekly after her as she lounged about the room, and
    he appeared to be a little frightened. When she had tossed a few trifles
    about, and had looked down into the darkening street out of all the
    three windows, she returned to her sofa, and threw herself among its
    pillows.

    'Now Edmund, come here! Come a little nearer, because I want to be able
    to touch you with my fan, that I may impress you very much with what I
    am going to say. That will do. Quite close enough. Oh, you _do_ look so
    big!'

    Mr Sparkler apologised for the circumstance, pleaded that he couldn't
    help it, and said that 'our fellows,' without more particularly
    indicating whose fellows, used to call him by the name of Quinbus
    Flestrin, Junior, or the Young Man Mountain.

    'You ought to have told me so before,' Fanny complained.

    'My dear,' returned Mr Sparkler, rather gratified, 'I didn't know
    It would interest you, or I would have made a point of telling you.'

    'There! For goodness sake, don't talk,' said Fanny; 'I want to talk,
    myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take such
    precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the state of
    dreadful depression in which I am this evening.'

    'My dear,' answered Mr Sparkler; 'being as you are well known to be, a
    remarkably fine woman with no--'

    'Oh, good GRACIOUS!' cried Fanny.

    Mr Sparkler was so discomposed by the energy of this exclamation,
    accompanied with a flouncing up from the sofa and a flouncing down
    again, that a minute or two elapsed before he felt himself equal to
    saying in explanation:

    'I mean, my dear, that everybody knows you are calculated to shine in
    society.'

    'Calculated to shine in society,' retorted Fanny with great
    irritability; 'yes, indeed! And then what happens? I no sooner recover,
    in a visiting point of view, the shock of poor dear papa's death, and my
    poor uncle's--though I do not disguise from myself that the last was
    a happy release, for, if you are not presentable you had much better
    die--'

    'You are not referring to me, my love, I hope?' Mr Sparkler humbly
    interrupted.

    'Edmund, Edmund, you would wear out a Saint. Am I not expressly speaking
    of my poor uncle?'

    'You looked with so much expression at myself, my dear girl,' said Mr
    Sparkler, 'that I felt a little uncomfortable. Thank you, my love.'

    'Now you have put me out,' observed Fanny with a resigned toss of her
    fan, 'and I had better go to bed.'

    'Don't do that, my love,' urged Mr Sparkler. 'Take time.'

    Fanny took a good deal of time: lying back with her eyes shut, and her
    eyebrows raised with a hopeless expression as if she had utterly given
    up all terrestrial affairs. At length, without the slightest notice, she
    opened her eyes again, and recommenced in a short, sharp manner:

    'What happens then, I ask! What happens? Why, I find myself at the very
    period when I might shine most in society, and should most like for
    very momentous reasons to shine in society--I find myself in a situation
    which to a certain extent disqualifies me for going into society. It's
    too bad, really!'

    'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I don't think it need keep you at
    home.'

    'Edmund, you ridiculous creature,' returned Fanny, with great
    indignation; 'do you suppose that a woman in the bloom of youth and not
    wholly devoid of personal attractions, can put herself, at such a
    time, in competition as to figure with a woman in every other way her
    inferior? If you do suppose such a thing, your folly is boundless.'

    Mr Sparkler submitted that he had thought 'it might be got over.'

    'Got over!' repeated Fanny, with immeasurable scorn.

    'For a time,' Mr Sparkler submitted.

    Honouring the last feeble suggestion with no notice, Mrs Sparkler
    declared with bitterness that it really was too bad, and that positively
    it was enough to make one wish one was dead!

    'However,' she said, when she had in some measure recovered from her
    sense of personal ill-usage; 'provoking as it is, and cruel as it seems,
    I suppose it must be submitted to.'

    'Especially as it was to be expected,' said Mr Sparkler.

    'Edmund,' returned his wife, 'if you have nothing more becoming to do
    than to attempt to insult the woman who has honoured you with her hand,
    when she finds herself in adversity, I think _you_ had better go to bed!'

    Mr Sparkler was much afflicted by the charge, and offered a most
    tender and earnest apology. His apology was accepted; but Mrs Sparkler
    requested him to go round to the other side of the sofa and sit in the
    window-curtain, to tone himself down.

    'Now, Edmund,' she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him with
    it at arm's length, 'what I was going to say to you when you began as
    usual to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against our being alone
    any more, and that when circumstances prevent my going out to my own
    satisfaction, I must arrange to have some people or other always here;
    for I really cannot, and will not, have another such day as this has
    been.'

    Mr Sparkler's sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had no
    nonsense about it. He added, 'And besides, you know it's likely that
    you'll soon have your sister--'

    'Dearest Amy, yes!' cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection.
    'Darling little thing! Not, however, that Amy would do here alone.'

    Mr Sparkler was going to say 'No?' interrogatively, but he saw his
    danger and said it assentingly, 'No, Oh dear no; she wouldn't do here
    alone.'

    'No, Edmund. For not only are the virtues of the precious child of that
    still character that they require a contrast--require life and movement
    around them to bring them out in their right colours and make one love
    them of all things; but she will require to be roused, on more accounts
    than one.'

    'That's it,' said Mr Sparkler. 'Roused.'

    'Pray don't, Edmund! Your habit of interrupting without having the least
    thing in the world to say, distracts one. You must be broken of it.
    Speaking of Amy;--my poor little pet was devotedly attached to poor
    papa, and no doubt will have lamented his loss exceedingly, and grieved
    very much. I have done so myself. I have felt it dreadfully. But Amy
    will no doubt have felt it even more, from having been on the spot the
    whole time, and having been with poor dear papa at the last; which I
    unhappily was not.'

    Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to say, 'Dear, dear, beloved papa! How
    truly gentlemanly he was! What a contrast to poor uncle!'

    'From the effects of that trying time,' she pursued, 'my good little
    Mouse will have to be roused. Also, from the effects of this long
    attendance upon Edward in his illness; an attendance which is not
    yet over, which may even go on for some time longer, and which in the
    meanwhile unsettles us all by keeping poor dear papa's affairs from
    being wound up. Fortunately, however, the papers with his agents
    here being all sealed up and locked up, as he left them when he
    providentially came to England, the affairs are in that state of order
    that they can wait until my brother Edward recovers his health in
    Sicily, sufficiently to come over, and administer, or execute, or
    whatever it may be that will have to be done.'

    'He couldn't have a better nurse to bring him round,' Mr Sparkler made
    bold to opine.

    'For a wonder, I can agree with you,' returned his wife, languidly
    turning her eyelids a little in his direction (she held forth, in
            general, as if to the drawing-room furniture), 'and can adopt your
    words. He couldn't have a better nurse to bring him round. There are
    times when my dear child is a little wearing to an active mind; but, as
    a nurse, she is Perfection. Best of Amys!'

    Mr Sparkler, growing rash on his late success, observed that Edward had
    had, biggodd, a long bout of it, my dear girl.

    'If Bout, Edmund,' returned Mrs Sparkler, 'is the slang term for
    indisposition, he has. If it is not, I am unable to give an opinion
    on the barbarous language you address to Edward's sister. That he
    contracted Malaria Fever somewhere, either by travelling day and night
    to Rome, where, after all, he arrived too late to see poor dear papa
    before his death--or under some other unwholesome circumstances--is
    indubitable, if that is what you mean. Likewise that his extremely
    careless life has made him a very bad subject for it indeed.'

    Mr Sparkler considered it a parallel case to that of some of our fellows
    in the West Indies with Yellow Jack. Mrs Sparkler closed her eyes again,
    and refused to have any consciousness of our fellows of the West Indies,
    or of Yellow Jack.

    'So, Amy,' she pursued, when she reopened her eyelids, 'will require
    to be roused from the effects of many tedious and anxious weeks. And
    lastly, she will require to be roused from a low tendency which I know
    very well to be at the bottom of her heart. Don't ask me what it is,
    Edmund, because I must decline to tell you.'

    'I am not going to, my dear,' said Mr Sparkler.

    'I shall thus have much improvement to effect in my sweet child,' Mrs
    Sparkler continued, 'and cannot have her near me too soon. Amiable and
    dear little Twoshoes! As to the settlement of poor papa's affairs, my
    interest in that is not very selfish. Papa behaved very generously to me
    when I was married, and I have little or nothing to expect. Provided
    he had made no will that can come into force, leaving a legacy to Mrs
    General, I am contented. Dear papa, dear papa.'

    She wept again, but Mrs General was the best of restoratives. The name
    soon stimulated her to dry her eyes and say:

    'It is a highly encouraging circumstance in Edward's illness, I am
    thankful to think, and gives one the greatest confidence in his sense
    not being impaired, or his proper spirit weakened--down to the time
    of poor dear papa's death at all events--that he paid off Mrs General
    instantly, and sent her out of the house. I applaud him for it. I could
    forgive him a great deal for doing, with such promptitude, so exactly
    what I would have done myself!'

    Mrs Sparkler was in the full glow of her gratification, when a double
    knock was heard at the door. A very odd knock. Low, as if to avoid
    making a noise and attracting attention. Long, as if the person knocking
    were preoccupied in mind, and forgot to leave off.

    'Halloa!' said Mr Sparkler. 'Who's this?'

    'Not Amy and Edward without notice and without a carriage!' said Mrs
    Sparkler. 'Look out.'

    The room was dark, but the street was lighter, because of its lamps. Mr
    Sparkler's head peeping over the balcony looked so very bulky and heavy
    that it seemed on the point of overbalancing him and flattening the
    unknown below.

    'It's one fellow,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I can't see who--stop though!'

    On this second thought he went out into the balcony again and had
    another look. He came back as the door was opened, and announced that he
    believed he had identified 'his governor's tile.' He was not mistaken,
    for his governor, with his tile in his hand, was introduced immediately
    afterwards.

    'Candles!' said Mrs Sparkler, with a word of excuse for the darkness.

    'It's light enough for me,' said Mr Merdle.

    When the candles were brought in, Mr Merdle was discovered standing
    behind the door, picking his lips. 'I thought I'd give you a call,' he
    said. 'I am rather particularly occupied just now; and, as I happened to
    be out for a stroll, I thought I'd give you a call.'

    As he was in dinner dress, Fanny asked him where he had been dining?

    'Well,' said Mr Merdle, 'I haven't been dining anywhere, particularly.'

    'Of course you have dined?' said Fanny.

    'Why--no, I haven't exactly dined,' said Mr Merdle.

    He had passed his hand over his yellow forehead and considered, as if he
    were not sure about it. Something to eat was proposed. 'No, thank you,'
    said Mr Merdle, 'I don't feel inclined for it. I was to have dined out
    along with Mrs Merdle. But as I didn't feel inclined for dinner, I let
    Mrs Merdle go by herself just as we were getting into the carriage, and
    thought I'd take a stroll instead.'

    Would he have tea or coffee? 'No, thank you,' said Mr Merdle. 'I looked
    in at the Club, and got a bottle of wine.'

    At this period of his visit, Mr Merdle took the chair which Edmund
    Sparkler had offered him, and which he had hitherto been pushing slowly
    about before him, like a dull man with a pair of skates on for the first
    time, who could not make up his mind to start. He now put his hat upon
    another chair beside him, and, looking down into it as if it were some
    twenty feet deep, said again: 'You see I thought I'd give you a call.'

    'Flattering to us,' said Fanny, 'for you are not a calling man.'

    'No--no,' returned Mr Merdle, who was by this time taking himself into
    custody under both coat-sleeves. 'No, I am not a calling man.'

    'You have too much to do for that,' said Fanny. 'Having so much to do,
    Mr Merdle, loss of appetite is a serious thing with you, and you must
    have it seen to. You must not be ill.'

    'Oh! I am very well,' replied Mr Merdle, after deliberating about it. 'I
    am as well as I usually am. I am well enough. I am as well as I want to
    be.'

    The master-mind of the age, true to its characteristic of being at all
    times a mind that had as little as possible to say for itself and great
    difficulty in saying it, became mute again. Mrs Sparkler began to wonder
    how long the master-mind meant to stay.

    'I was speaking of poor papa when you came in, sir.'

    'Aye! Quite a coincidence,' said Mr Merdle.

    Fanny did not see that; but felt it incumbent on her to continue
    talking. 'I was saying,' she pursued, 'that my brother's illness has
    occasioned a delay in examining and arranging papa's property.'

    'Yes,' said Mr Merdle; 'yes. There has been a delay.'

    'Not that it is of consequence,' said Fanny.

    'Not,' assented Mr Merdle, after having examined the cornice of all
    that part of the room which was within his range: 'not that it is of any
    consequence.'

    'My only anxiety is,' said Fanny, 'that Mrs General should not get
    anything.'

    '_She_ won't get anything,' said Mr Merdle.

    Fanny was delighted to hear him express the opinion. Mr Merdle, after
    taking another gaze into the depths of his hat as if he thought he saw
    something at the bottom, rubbed his hair and slowly appended to his last
    remark the confirmatory words, 'Oh dear no. No. Not she. Not likely.'

    As the topic seemed exhausted, and Mr Merdle too, Fanny inquired if he
    were going to take up Mrs Merdle and the carriage in his way home?

    'No,' he answered; 'I shall go by the shortest way, and leave Mrs Merdle
    to--' here he looked all over the palms of both his hands as if he were
    telling his own fortune--'to take care of herself. I dare say she'll
    manage to do it.'

    'Probably,' said Fanny.

    There was then a long silence; during which, Mrs Sparkler, lying back
    on her sofa again, shut her eyes and raised her eyebrows in her former
    retirement from mundane affairs.

    'But, however,' said Mr Merdle, 'I am equally detaining you and myself.
    I thought I'd give you a call, you know.'

    'Charmed, I am sure,' said Fanny.

    'So I am off,' added Mr Merdle, getting up. 'Could you lend me a
    penknife?'

    It was an odd thing, Fanny smilingly observed, for her who could seldom
    prevail upon herself even to write a letter, to lend to a man of such
    vast business as Mr Merdle. 'Isn't it?' Mr Merdle acquiesced; 'but
    I want one; and I know you have got several little wedding keepsakes
    about, with scissors and tweezers and such things in them. You shall
    have it back to-morrow.'

    'Edmund,' said Mrs Sparkler, 'open (now, very carefully, I beg and
            beseech, for you are so very awkward) the mother of pearl box on my
    little table there, and give Mr Merdle the mother of pearl penknife.'

    'Thank you,' said Mr Merdle; 'but if you have got one with a darker
    handle, I think I should prefer one with a darker handle.'

    'Tortoise-shell?'

    'Thank you,' said Mr Merdle; 'yes. I think I should prefer
    tortoise-shell.'

    Edmund accordingly received instructions to open the tortoise-shell box,
    and give Mr Merdle the tortoise-shell knife. On his doing so, his wife
    said to the master-spirit graciously:

    'I will forgive you, if you ink it.'

    'I'll undertake not to ink it,' said Mr Merdle.

    The illustrious visitor then put out his coat-cuff, and for a moment
    entombed Mrs Sparkler's hand: wrist, bracelet, and all. Where his own
    hand had shrunk to, was not made manifest, but it was as remote from Mrs
    Sparkler's sense of touch as if he had been a highly meritorious Chelsea
    Veteran or Greenwich Pensioner.

    Thoroughly convinced, as he went out of the room, that it was the
    longest day that ever did come to an end at last, and that there never
    was a woman, not wholly devoid of personal attractions, so worn out by
    idiotic and lumpish people, Fanny passed into the balcony for a breath
    of air. Waters of vexation filled her eyes; and they had the effect of
    making the famous Mr Merdle, in going down the street, appear to leap,
    and waltz, and gyrate, as if he were possessed of several Devils.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Things are looking up for Merdle. Now he wants a title, and not just be a Baronet . The Barnacles are looking into it. Meanwhile Fanny and Sparkler are now in their new house. It's kind of a tiny, crappy house in the best possible location. Fanny is super bored. Her house is boring, her reflection is boring, the view out her windows is boring. And her husband? He's the most boring of all. They have nothing to talk about. And every time he opens his mouth to say anything, even to answer one of her questions, she immediately shuts him up. Ah, married life is grand. It turns out they've been stuck at home for some time. First there was the mourning period for Dorrit and Frederick Dorrit. Also, Fanny is preggers, which also limits her social life. Sparkler suggests that she could still party a little bit, but Fanny doesn't want her body compared with those who aren't pregnant. Finally Fanny suggests that they need to just have people over to their house all the time. All. The. Time. Because otherwise she is going to go crazy. Sparkler suggests Amy. Fanny is psyched at the idea of Amy coming, but obviously Amy alone won't be much fun. And besides, she is right now taking care of Tip, who is ill with malaria. Suddenly there is a tiny knock on the door. It's Merdle! He says repeatedly that he was out for a walk and decided to say hello. He is totally unable to make any conversation. He asks Fanny for a penknife . She offers him a mother-of-pearl one, but he prefers a tortoiseshell one instead. She asks him to try not to get ink on it. OK, then. He takes it and leaves. Fanny and Sparkler continuing their boring evening.


prompt:
Chapter: The dinner-party was at the great Physician's. Bar was there, and in
full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging
state. Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener
in its darkest places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies
about London who perfectly doted on him, my dear, as the most charming
creature and the most delightful person, who would have been shocked to
find themselves so close to him if they could have known on what sights
those thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour or two, and near
to whose beds, and under what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But
Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet,
          nor on the trumpets of other people. Many wonderful things did he see
          and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his
          life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than
          the Divine Master's of all healing was. He went, like the rain,
          among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither
          proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

          As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried
          it may be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the
          possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the
          daintier gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and
          who would have been startled out of more wits than they had, by the
          monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them 'Come and see what I
          see!' confessed his attraction. Where he was, something real was. And
          half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce
          natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.

          It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's little dinners always
          presented people in their least conventional lights. The guests said to
          themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, 'Here is a man who
          really has an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some
          of us every day with our wigs and paint off, who hears the wanderings of
          our minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both
          are past our control; we may as well make an approach to reality with
          him, for the man has got the better of us and is too strong for us.'
          Therefore, Physician's guests came out so surprisingly at his round
          table that they were almost natural.

          Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called
          humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally
          convenient instrument, and Physician's plain bright scalpel, though far
          less keen, was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the
          gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him
          a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of
          his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together,
          in threescore years and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this, and
          perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the world were really a great
                  Law Court, one would think that the last day of Term could not too soon
                  arrive); and so he liked and respected Physician quite as much as any
          other kind of man did.

          Mr Merdle's default left a Banquo's chair at the table; but, if he had
          been there, he would have merely made the difference of Banquo in it,
          and consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds
          and ends about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he
          had passed as much of his time there, had been picking up a great many
          straws lately and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind
          blew. He now had a little talk on the subject with Mrs Merdle herself;
          sidling up to that lady, of course, with his double eye-glass and his
          jury droop.

          'A certain bird,' said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no
          other bird than a magpie; 'has been whispering among us lawyers lately,
          that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.'

          'Really?' said Mrs Merdle.

          'Yes,' said Bar. 'Has not the bird been whispering in very different
          ears from ours--in lovely ears?' He looked expressively at Mrs Merdle's
          nearest ear-ring.

          'Do you mean mine?' asked Mrs Merdle.

          'When I say lovely,' said Bar, 'I always mean you.'

          'You never mean anything, I think,' returned Mrs Merdle (not
                  displeased).

          'Oh, cruelly unjust!' said Bar. 'But, the bird.'

          'I am the last person in the world to hear news,' observed Mrs Merdle,
          carelessly arranging her stronghold. 'Who is it?'

          'What an admirable witness you would make!' said Bar. 'No jury (unless
                  we could empanel one of blind men) could resist you, if you were ever so
          bad a one; but you would be such a good one!'

          'Why, you ridiculous man?' asked Mrs Merdle, laughing.

          Bar waved his double eye-glass three or four times between himself and
          the Bosom, as a rallying answer, and inquired in his most insinuating
          accents:

          'What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women,
          a few weeks, or it may be a few days, hence?'

          'Didn't your bird tell you what to call her?' answered Mrs Merdle. 'Do
          ask it to-morrow, and tell me the next time you see me what it says.'

          This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but
          Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing out of them. Physician, on the
          other hand, taking Mrs Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her
          as she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm
          directness.

          'May I ask,' he said, 'is this true about Merdle?'

          'My dear doctor,' she returned, 'you ask me the very question that I was
          half disposed to ask you.'

          'To ask me! Why me?'

          'Upon my honour, I think Mr Merdle reposes greater confidence in you
          than in any one.'

          'On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally.
          You have heard the talk, of course?'

          'Of course I have. But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how
          taciturn and reserved he is. I assure you I have no idea what foundation
          for it there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that
          to you? You would know better, if I did!'

          'Just so,' said Physician.

          'But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am
          wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking situation, a most absurd
          situation; but you know Mr Merdle, and are not surprised.'

          Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her
          Good Night. He stood for a moment at his own hall door, looking sedately
          at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return up-stairs, the
          rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great
          reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that
                  weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.

          The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve,
          when his attention was called to it by a ringing at the door bell. A man
          of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down
          to open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or
          coat, whose shirt sleeves were rolled up tight to his shoulders. For a
          moment, he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much
          agitated and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that
          the man was particularly clean, and not otherwise discomposed as to his
          dress than as it answered this description.

          'I come from the warm-baths, sir, round in the neighbouring street.'

          'And what is the matter at the warm-baths?'

          'Would you please to come directly, sir. We found that, lying on the
          table.'

          He put into the physician's hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at
          it, and read his own name and address written in pencil; nothing more.
          He looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from
          its peg, put the key of his door in his pocket, and they hurried away
          together.

          When they came to the warm-baths, all the other people belonging to that
          establishment were looking out for them at the door, and running up and
          down the passages. 'Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,'
          said the physician aloud to the master; 'and do you take me straight to
          the place, my friend,' to the messenger.

          The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms,
          and turning into one at the end of the grove, looked round the door.
          Physician was close upon him, and looked round the door too.

          There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily
          drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried
          drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a
          heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common
          features. A sky-light had been opened to release the steam with which
          the room had been filled; but it hung, condensed into water-drops,
          heavily upon the walls, and heavily upon the face and figure in the
          bath. The room was still hot, and the marble of the bath still warm; but
          the face and figure were clammy to the touch. The white marble at the
          bottom of the bath was veined with a dreadful red. On the ledge at
          the side, were an empty laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell handled
          penknife--soiled, but not with ink.

          'Separation of jugular vein--death rapid--been dead at least half an
          hour.' This echo of the physician's words ran through the passages
          and little rooms, and through the house while he was yet straightening
          himself from having bent down to reach to the bottom of the bath, and
          while he was yet dabbling his hands in water; redly veining it as the
          marble was veined, before it mingled into one tint.

          He turned his eyes to the dress upon the sofa, and to the watch, money,
          and pocket-book on the table. A folded note half buckled up in the
          pocket-book, and half protruding from it, caught his observant glance.
          He looked at it, touched it, pulled it a little further out from among
          the leaves, said quietly, 'This is addressed to me,' and opened and read
          it.

          There were no directions for him to give. The people of the house knew
          what to do; the proper authorities were soon brought; and they took an
          equable business-like possession of the deceased, and of what had been
          his property, with no greater disturbance of manner or countenance than
          usually attends the winding-up of a clock. Physician was glad to walk
          out into the night air--was even glad, in spite of his great experience,
          to sit down upon a door-step for a little while: feeling sick and faint.

          Bar was a near neighbour of his, and, when he came to the house, he saw
          a light in the room where he knew his friend often sat late getting up
          his work. As the light was never there when Bar was not, it gave him
          assurance that Bar was not yet in bed. In fact, this busy bee had
          a verdict to get to-morrow, against evidence, and was improving the
          shining hours in setting snares for the gentlemen of the jury.

          Physician's knock astonished Bar; but, as he immediately suspected that
          somebody had come to tell him that somebody else was robbing him, or
          otherwise trying to get the better of him, he came down promptly and
          softly. He had been clearing his head with a lotion of cold water, as a
          good preparative to providing hot water for the heads of the jury, and
          had been reading with the neck of his shirt thrown wide open that he
          might the more freely choke the opposite witnesses. In consequence, he
          came down, looking rather wild. Seeing Physician, the least expected of
          men, he looked wilder and said, 'What's the matter?'

          'You asked me once what Merdle's complaint was.'

          'Extraordinary answer! I know I did.'

          'I told you I had not found out.'

          'Yes. I know you did.'

          'I have found it out.'

          'My God!' said Bar, starting back, and clapping his hand upon the
          other's breast. 'And so have I! I see it in your face.'

          They went into the nearest room, where Physician gave him the letter to
          read. He read it through half-a-dozen times. There was not much in it
          as to quantity; but it made a great demand on his close and continuous
          attention. He could not sufficiently give utterance to his regret that
          he had not himself found a clue to this. The smallest clue, he said,
          would have made him master of the case, and what a case it would have
          been to have got to the bottom of!

          Physician had engaged to break the intelligence in Harley Street. Bar
          could not at once return to his inveiglements of the most enlightened
          and remarkable jury he had ever seen in that box, with whom, he could
          tell his learned friend, no shallow sophistry would go down, and no
          unhappily abused professional tact and skill prevail (this was the way
                  he meant to begin with them); so he said he would go too, and would
          loiter to and fro near the house while his friend was inside. They
          walked there, the better to recover self-possession in the air; and the
          wings of day were fluttering the night when Physician knocked at the
          door.

          A footman of rainbow hues, in the public eye, was sitting up for his
          master--that is to say, was fast asleep in the kitchen over a couple
          of candles and a newspaper, demonstrating the great accumulation of
          mathematical odds against the probabilities of a house being set on fire
          by accident When this serving man was roused, Physician had still to
          await the rousing of the Chief Butler. At last that noble creature came
          into the dining-room in a flannel gown and list shoes; but with his
          cravat on, and a Chief Butler all over. It was morning now. Physician
          had opened the shutters of one window while waiting, that he might see
          the light.

          'Mrs Merdle's maid must be called, and told to get Mrs Merdle up, and
          prepare her as gently as she can to see me. I have dreadful news to
          break to her.'

          Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. The latter, who had a candle in his
          hand, called his man to take it away. Then he approached the window with
          dignity; looking on at Physician's news exactly as he had looked on at
          the dinners in that very room.

          'Mr Merdle is dead.'

          'I should wish,' said the Chief Butler, 'to give a month's notice.'

          'Mr Merdle has destroyed himself.'

          'Sir,' said the Chief Butler, 'that is very unpleasant to the feelings
          of one in my position, as calculated to awaken prejudice; and I should
          wish to leave immediately.'

          'If you are not shocked, are you not surprised, man?' demanded the
          Physician, warmly.

          The Chief Butler, erect and calm, replied in these memorable words.
          'Sir, Mr Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on
          Mr Merdle's part would surprise me. Is there anybody else I can send to
          you, or any other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what
          you would wish to be done?'

          When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust up-stairs,
          rejoined Bar in the street, he said no more of his interview with Mrs
          Merdle than that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told
          her she had borne pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure in the street
          to the construction of a most ingenious man-trap for catching the whole
          of his jury at a blow; having got that matter settled in his mind,
          it was lucid on the late catastrophe, and they walked home slowly,
          discussing it in every bearing. Before parting at the Physician's door,
          they both looked up at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a
          few early fires and the breath and voices of a few early stirrers were
          peacefully rising, and then looked round upon the immense city, and
          said, if all those hundreds and thousands of beggared people who were
          yet asleep could only know, as they two spoke, the ruin that impended
          over them, what a fearful cry against one miserable soul would go up to
          Heaven!

          The report that the great man was dead, got about with astonishing
          rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were
          known, and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of
          Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from
          infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from his
          grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning
          of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of
          important veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had
          something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter
          with his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain. Five
          hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the
          whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they
          privately and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr Merdle, 'You
          must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;' and that
          they knew Mr Merdle to have said to Physician, 'A man can die but once.'
          By about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the
          brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the
          something had been distinctly ascertained to be 'Pressure.'

          Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to
          make everybody so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for
          Bar's having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past
          nine. This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over
          London by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed himself. Pressure,
          however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater
          favourite than ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in
          every street. All the people who had tried to make money and had not
          been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote
          yourself to the pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people
          improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what you
          brought yourself to by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you
          overdid it. Pressure came on, and you were done for! This consideration
          was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the
          young clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger
          of overdoing it. These, one and all, declared, quite piously, that they
          hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they lived, and
          that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and
          preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many years.

          But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pressure began to wane, and
          appalling whispers to circulate, east, west, north, and south. At first
          they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle's
          wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there
          might not be a temporary difficulty in 'realising' it; whether there
          might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the
          part of the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they
          did from that time every minute, they became more threatening. He had
          sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could
          account for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been
          a down-looking man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye;
          he had been taken up by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable
          manner; he had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been
          utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been most enormous. In steady
          progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose.
          He had left a letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his
          physician had got the letter, and the letter would be produced at the
          Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the
          multitude he had deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade
          would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who had been in easy
          circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for
          their trust in him but the workhouse; legions of women and children
          would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this mighty
          scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to
          have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every servile
          worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would
          have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed
          louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after
          edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came,
          as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the
          gallery above the Dome of St Paul's would have perceived the night air
          to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with
          every form of execration.

          For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle's complaint
          had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such
          wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg
          of great ladies' assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller
          of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister
          for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more
          acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been
          bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon
          all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to
          testify for them, during two centuries at least--he, the shining wonder,
          the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts,
          until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and
          disappeared--was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that
          ever cheated the gallows.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: There's a party at Physician's house. Merdle didn't want to go to it with Mrs. Merdle, which is why he went over to the Sparklers' instead. Physician is taken seriously by everyone, since he's seen more of the human condition than most of them. He's also seen almost everyone there naked. Bar is trying to get Mrs. Merdle to admit that Merdle is about to get a title, but she is being all coy about it. After everyone goes away, there's a knock on Physician's door. A messenger gives him a piece of paper found at the public baths - it's got his name and address on it in a familiar handwriting. Physician immediately hurries to the baths and finds... Merdle in a bathtub, wrists slit, blood everywhere, pen knife in hand. He's dead. Physician leaves the body to be dealt with and goes to tell Bar. Bar kind of figures it out from the time of night and from Physician's face. They go together to the Merdles' so that Physician can tell Mrs. Merdle the news. While Mrs. Merdle is getting ready to come downstairs, Physician tells the Merdles' Chief Butler about Merdle's suicide. The butler has no reaction besides saying that he wants to hand in his notice. Physician is all, dude, that's cold. But the butler says, "Sir, Mr. Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on Mr. Merdle's part would surprise me" . Slam! Physician tells Bar that Mrs. Merdle doesn't know the whole story yet but is taking it pretty well. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling around the city. First - that Merdle is dead. From a horrible disease, from exhaustion, from stress? Stress is a big winner for the gossips, since it seems to explain a lot. Second - that Merdle's wealth is actually going to end up being way less than expected. But finally - that he had killed himself. And that he had no money at all. In fact, he was deeply in debt and had actually defrauded and bankrupted everyone in the whole freaking country!