prompt:
Chapter: The passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais.
A low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide
ebbing out towards low water-mark. There had been no more water on the
bar than had sufficed to float the packet in; and now the bar itself,
    with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like a lazy marine monster
    just risen to the surface, whose form was indistinctly shown as it lay
    asleep. The meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard as if
    it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity,
    dropped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves. The long
    rows of gaunt black piles, slimy and wet and weather-worn, with funeral
    garlands of seaweed twisted about them by the late tide, might
    have represented an unsightly marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed,
    storm-beaten object, was so low and so little, under the broad grey sky,
    in the noise of the wind and sea, and before the curling lines of surf,
    making at it ferociously, that the wonder was there was any Calais left,
    and that its low gates and low wall and low roofs and low ditches and
    low sand-hills and low ramparts and flat streets, had not yielded
    long ago to the undermining and besieging sea, like the fortifications
    children make on the sea-shore.

    After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps and
    encountering many salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their
    comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the French vagabonds
    and English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to
    prevent their recovery from bewilderment. After being minutely inspected
    by all the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed as
    prizes by all the French in a hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a
    mile long, they were at last free to enter the streets, and to make off
    in their various directions, hotly pursued.

    Clennam, harassed by more anxieties than one, was among this devoted
    band. Having rescued the most defenceless of his compatriots from
    situations of great extremity, he now went his way alone, or as nearly
    alone as he could be, with a native gentleman in a suit of grease and
    a cap of the same material, giving chase at a distance of some fifty
    yards, and continually calling after him, 'Hi! Ice-say! You! Seer!
    Ice-say! Nice Oatel!'

    Even this hospitable person, however, was left behind at last, and
    Clennam pursued his way, unmolested. There was a tranquil air in the
    town after the turbulence of the Channel and the beach, and its dulness
    in that comparison was agreeable. He met new groups of his countrymen,
    who had all a straggling air of having at one time overblown themselves,
    like certain uncomfortable kinds of flowers, and of being now mere
    weeds. They had all an air, too, of lounging out a limited round, day
    after day, which strongly reminded him of the Marshalsea. But, taking
    no further note of them than was sufficient to give birth to the
    reflection, he sought out a certain street and number which he kept in
    his mind.

    'So Pancks said,' he murmured to himself, as he stopped before a dull
    house answering to the address. 'I suppose his information to be correct
    and his discovery, among Mr Casby's loose papers, indisputable; but,
    without it, I should hardly have supposed this to be a likely place.'

    A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over the way and a dead gateway
    at the side, where a pendant bell-handle produced two dead tinkles, and
    a knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tapping, that seemed not to
    have depth enough in it to penetrate even the cracked door. However, the
    door jarred open on a dead sort of spring; and he closed it behind him
    as he entered a dull yard, soon brought to a close by another dead wall,
    where an attempt had been made to train some creeping shrubs, which were
    dead; and to make a little fountain in a grotto, which was dry; and to
    decorate that with a little statue, which was gone.

    The entry to the house was on the left, and it was garnished as the
    outer gateway was, with two printed bills in French and English,
    announcing Furnished Apartments to let, with immediate possession. A
    strong cheerful peasant woman, all stocking, petticoat, white cap, and
    ear-ring, stood here in a dark doorway, and said with a pleasant show of
    teeth, 'Ice-say! Seer! Who?'

    Clennam, replying in French, said the English lady; he wished to see
    the English lady. 'Enter then and ascend, if you please,' returned the
    peasant woman, in French likewise. He did both, and followed her up a
    dark bare staircase to a back room on the first-floor. Hence, there was
    a gloomy view of the yard that was dull, and of the shrubs that were
    dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the pedestal of the
    statue that was gone.

    'Monsieur Blandois,' said Clennam.

    'With pleasure, Monsieur.'

    Thereupon the woman withdrew and left him to look at the room. It was
    the pattern of room always to be found in such a house. Cool, dull, and
    dark. Waxed floor very slippery. A room not large enough to skate in;
    nor adapted to the easy pursuit of any other occupation. Red and
    white curtained windows, little straw mat, little round table with a
    tumultuous assemblage of legs underneath, clumsy rush-bottomed chairs,
    two great red velvet arm-chairs affording plenty of space to be
    uncomfortable in, bureau, chimney-glass in several pieces pretending to
    be in one piece, pair of gaudy vases of very artificial flowers; between
    them a Greek warrior with his helmet off, sacrificing a clock to the
    Genius of France.

    After some pause, a door of communication with another room was opened,
    and a lady entered. She manifested great surprise on seeing Clennam, and
    her glance went round the room in search of some one else.

    'Pardon me, Miss Wade. I am alone.'

    'It was not your name that was brought to me.'

    'No; I know that. Excuse me. I have already had experience that my name
    does not predispose you to an interview; and I ventured to mention the
    name of one I am in search of.'

    'Pray,' she returned, motioning him to a chair so coldly that he
    remained standing, 'what name was it that you gave?'

    'I mentioned the name of Blandois.'

    'Blandois?'

    'A name you are acquainted with.'

    'It is strange,' she said, frowning, 'that you should still press an
    undesired interest in me and my acquaintances, in me and my affairs, Mr
    Clennam. I don't know what you mean.'

    'Pardon me. You know the name?'

    'What can you have to do with the name? What can I have to do with the
    name? What can you have to do with my knowing or not knowing any name?
    I know many names and I have forgotten many more. This may be in the
    one class, or it may be in the other, or I may never have heard it. I am
    acquainted with no reason for examining myself, or for being examined,
    about it.'

    'If you will allow me,' said Clennam, 'I will tell you my reason for
    pressing the subject. I admit that I do press it, and I must beg you to
    forgive me if I do so, very earnestly. The reason is all mine, I do not
    insinuate that it is in any way yours.'

    'Well, sir,' she returned, repeating a little less haughtily than before
    her former invitation to him to be seated: to which he now deferred, as
    she seated herself. 'I am at least glad to know that this is not another
    bondswoman of some friend of yours, who is bereft of free choice, and
    whom I have spirited away. I will hear your reason, if you please.'

    'First, to identify the person of whom we speak,' said Clennam, 'let me
    observe that it is the person you met in London some time back. You will
    remember meeting him near the river--in the Adelphi!'

    'You mix yourself most unaccountably with my business,' she replied,
    looking full at him with stern displeasure. 'How do you know that?'

    'I entreat you not to take it ill. By mere accident.'

    'What accident?'

    'Solely the accident of coming upon you in the street and seeing the
    meeting.'

    'Do you speak of yourself, or of some one else?'

    'Of myself. I saw it.'

    'To be sure it was in the open street,' she observed, after a few
    moments of less and less angry reflection. 'Fifty people might have seen
    it. It would have signified nothing if they had.'

    'Nor do I make my having seen it of any moment, nor (otherwise than as
            an explanation of my coming here) do I connect my visit with it or the
    favour that I have to ask.'

    'Oh! You have to ask a favour! It occurred to me,' and the handsome face
    looked bitterly at him, 'that your manner was softened, Mr Clennam.'

    He was content to protest against this by a slight action without
    contesting it in words. He then referred to Blandois' disappearance, of
    which it was probable she had heard? However probable it was to him, she
    had heard of no such thing. Let him look round him (she said) and judge
    for himself what general intelligence was likely to reach the ears of
    a woman who had been shut up there while it was rife, devouring her own
    heart. When she had uttered this denial, which he believed to be true,
    she asked him what he meant by disappearance? That led to his narrating
    the circumstances in detail, and expressing something of his anxiety
    to discover what had really become of the man, and to repel the dark
    suspicions that clouded about his mother's house. She heard him with
    evident surprise, and with more marks of suppressed interest than he
    had seen in her; still they did not overcome her distant, proud, and
    self-secluded manner. When he had finished, she said nothing but these
    words:

    'You have not yet told me, sir, what I have to do with it, or what the
    favour is? Will you be so good as come to that?'

    'I assume,' said Arthur, persevering, in his endeavour to soften
    her scornful demeanour, 'that being in communication--may I say,
    confidential communication?--with this person--'

    'You may say, of course, whatever you like,' she remarked; 'but I do not
    subscribe to your assumptions, Mr Clennam, or to any one's.'

    '--that being, at least in personal communication with him,' said
    Clennam, changing the form of his position in the hope of making
    it unobjectionable, 'you can tell me something of his antecedents,
    pursuits, habits, usual place of residence. Can give me some little clue
    by which to seek him out in the likeliest manner, and either produce
    him, or establish what has become of him. This is the favour I ask,
    and I ask it in a distress of mind for which I hope you will feel some
    consideration. If you should have any reason for imposing conditions
    upon me, I will respect it without asking what it is.'

    'You chanced to see me in the street with the man,' she observed,
    after being, to his mortification, evidently more occupied with her own
    reflections on the matter than with his appeal. 'Then you knew the man
    before?'

    'Not before; afterwards. I never saw him before, but I saw him again on
    this very night of his disappearance. In my mother's room, in fact. I
    left him there. You will read in this paper all that is known of him.'

    He handed her one of the printed bills, which she read with a steady and
    attentive face.

    'This is more than _I_ knew of him,' she said, giving it back.
    Clennam's looks expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his
    incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: 'You don't
    believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that
    there was personal communication between him and your mother. And yet
    you say you believe _her_ declaration that she knows no more of him!'

    A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these words,
    and in the smile by which they were accompanied, to bring the blood into
    Clennam's cheeks.

    'Come, sir,' she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab, 'I
    will be as open with you as you can desire. I will confess that if I
    cared for my credit (which I do not), or had a good name to preserve
    (which I have not, for I am utterly indifferent to its being considered
     good or bad), I should regard myself as heavily compromised by having
    had anything to do with this fellow. Yet he never passed in at _my_
    door--never sat in colloquy with _me_ until midnight.'

    She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject
    against him. Hers was not the nature to spare him, and she had no
    compunction.

    'That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling about
    Italy (where I was, not long ago), and that I hired him there, as the
    suitable instrument of a purpose I happened to have; I have no objection
    to tell you. In short, it was worth my while, for my own pleasure--the
    gratification of a strong feeling--to pay a spy who would fetch and
    carry for money. I paid this creature. And I dare say that if I had
    wanted to make such a bargain, and if I could have paid him enough, and
    if he could have done it in the dark, free from all risk, he would have
    taken any life with as little scruple as he took my money. That, at
    least, is my opinion of him; and I see it is not very far removed from
    yours. Your mother's opinion of him, I am to assume (following your
            example of assuming this and that), was vastly different.'

    'My mother, let me remind you,' said Clennam, 'was first brought into
    communication with him in the unlucky course of business.'

    'It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last brought
    her into communication with him,' returned Miss Wade; 'and business
    hours on that occasion were late.'

    'You imply,' said Arthur, smarting under these cool-handed thrusts, of
    which he had deeply felt the force already, 'that there was something--'

    'Mr Clennam,' she composedly interrupted, 'recollect that I do not speak
    by implication about the man. He is, I say again without disguise, a low
    mercenary wretch. I suppose such a creature goes where there is occasion
    for him. If I had not had occasion for him, you would not have seen him
    and me together.'

    Wrung by her persistence in keeping that dark side of the case before
    him, of which there was a half-hidden shadow in his own breast, Clennam
    was silent.

    'I have spoken of him as still living,' she added, 'but he may have been
    put out of the way for anything I know. For anything I care, also. I
    have no further occasion for him.'

    With a heavy sigh and a despondent air, Arthur Clennam slowly rose.
    She did not rise also, but said, having looked at him in the meanwhile
    with a fixed look of suspicion, and lips angrily compressed:

    'He was the chosen associate of your dear friend, Mr Gowan, was he not?
    Why don't you ask your dear friend to help you?'

    The denial that he was a dear friend rose to Arthur's lips; but he
    repressed it, remembering his old struggles and resolutions, and said:

    'Further than that he has never seen Blandois since Blandois set out for
    England, Mr Gowan knows nothing additional about him. He was a chance
    acquaintance, made abroad.'

    'A chance acquaintance made abroad!' she repeated. 'Yes. Your dear
    friend has need to divert himself with all the acquaintances he can
    make, seeing what a wife he has. I hate his wife, sir.'

    The anger with which she said it, the more remarkable for being so much
    under her restraint, fixed Clennam's attention, and kept him on the
    spot. It flashed out of her dark eyes as they regarded him, quivered in
    her nostrils, and fired the very breath she exhaled; but her face was
    otherwise composed into a disdainful serenity; and her attitude was as
    calmly and haughtily graceful as if she had been in a mood of complete
    indifference.

    'All I will say is, Miss Wade,' he remarked, 'that you can have received
    no provocation to a feeling in which I believe you have no sharer.'

    'You may ask your dear friend, if you choose,' she returned, 'for his
    opinion upon that subject.'

    'I am scarcely on those intimate terms with my dear friend,' said
    Arthur, in spite of his resolutions, 'that would render my approaching
    the subject very probable, Miss Wade.'

    'I hate him,' she returned. 'Worse than his wife, because I was once
    dupe enough, and false enough to myself, almost to love him. You have
    seen me, sir, only on common-place occasions, when I dare say you have
    thought me a common-place woman, a little more self-willed than the
    generality. You don't know what I mean by hating, if you know me no
    better than that; you can't know, without knowing with what care I have
    studied myself and people about me. For this reason I have for some
    time inclined to tell you what my life has been--not to propitiate your
    opinion, for I set no value on it; but that you may comprehend, when
    you think of your dear friend and his dear wife, what I mean by hating.
    Shall I give you something I have written and put by for your perusal,
    or shall I hold my hand?'

    Arthur begged her to give it to him. She went to the bureau, unlocked
    it, and took from an inner drawer a few folded sheets of paper. Without
    any conciliation of him, scarcely addressing him, rather speaking as if
    she were speaking to her own looking-glass for the justification of her
    own stubbornness, she said, as she gave them to him:

    'Now you may know what I mean by hating! No more of that. Sir, whether
    you find me temporarily and cheaply lodging in an empty London house, or
    in a Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me. You may like to see
    her before you leave. Harriet, come in!' She called Harriet again. The
    second call produced Harriet, once Tattycoram.

    'Here is Mr Clennam,' said Miss Wade; 'not come for you; he has given
    you up,--I suppose you have, by this time?'

    'Having no authority, or influence--yes,' assented Clennam.

    'Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one. He
    wants that Blandois man.'

    'With whom I saw you in the Strand in London,' hinted Arthur.

    'If you know anything of him, Harriet, except that he came from
    Venice--which we all know--tell it to Mr Clennam freely.'

    'I know nothing more about him,' said the girl.

    'Are you satisfied?' Miss Wade inquired of Arthur.

    He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl's manner being so natural
    as to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous doubts. He
    replied, 'I must seek for intelligence elsewhere.'

    He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl
    entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly at him,
    and said:

    'Are they well, sir?'

    'Who?'

    She stopped herself in saying what would have been 'all of them;'
    glanced at Miss Wade; and said 'Mr and Mrs Meagles.'

    'They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way,
    let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?'

    'Where? Where does any one say I was seen?' returned the girl, sullenly
    casting down her eyes.

    'Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage.'

    'No,' said Miss Wade. 'She has never been near it.'

    'You are wrong, then,' said the girl. 'I went down there the last time
    we were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me alone. And I
    did look in.'

    'You poor-spirited girl,' returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt;
    'does all our companionship, do all our conversations, do all your old
    complainings, tell for so little as that?'

    'There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,' said the
    girl. 'I saw by the windows that the family were not there.'

    'Why should you go near the place?'

    'Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look
    at it again.'

    As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how
    each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to pieces.

    'Oh!' said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; 'if you
    had any desire to see the place where you led the life from which I
    rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is another
    thing. But is that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is
    that the common cause I make with you? You are not worth the confidence
    I have placed in you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You
    are no higher than a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who
    did worse than whip you.'

    'If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you'll provoke me
    to take their part,' said the girl.

    'Go back to them,' Miss Wade retorted. 'Go back to them.'

    'You know very well,' retorted Harriet in her turn, 'that I won't go
    back to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off, and never
    can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then,
    Miss Wade.'

    'You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,' she rejoined.
    'You exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have expected? I
    ought to have known it.'

    'It's not so,' said the girl, flushing high, 'and you don't say what you
    mean. I know what you mean. You are reproaching me, underhanded, with
    having nobody but you to look to. And because I have nobody but you
    to look to, you think you are to make me do, or not do, everything you
    please, and are to put any affront upon me. You are as bad as they were,
    every bit. But I will not be quite tamed, and made submissive. I will
    say again that I went to look at the house, because I had often thought
    that I should like to see it once more. I will ask again how they are,
    because I once liked them and at times thought they were kind to me.'

    Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her
    kindly, if she should ever desire to return.

    'Never!' said the girl passionately. 'I shall never do that. Nobody
    knows that better than Miss Wade, though she taunts me because she has
    made me her dependent. And I know I am so; and I know she is overjoyed
    when she can bring it to my mind.'

    'A good pretence!' said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, and
    bitterness; 'but too threadbare to cover what I plainly see in this. My
    poverty will not bear competition with their money. Better go back at
    once, better go back at once, and have done with it!'

    Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder in the
    dull confined room, each proudly cherishing her own anger; each, with
    a fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and torturing the
    other's. He said a word or two of leave-taking; but Miss Wade barely
    inclined her head, and Harriet, with the assumed humiliation of an
    abject dependent and serf (but not without defiance for all that), made
    as if she were too low to notice or to be noticed.

    He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an increased
    sense upon him of the gloom of the wall that was dead, and of the shrubs
    that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the statue that
    was gone. Pondering much on what he had seen and heard in that house,
    as well as on the failure of all his efforts to trace the suspicious
    character who was lost, he returned to London and to England by the
    packet that had taken him over. On the way he unfolded the sheets of
    paper, and read in them what is reproduced in the next chapter.

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

completion: Arthur gets off the boat at Calais, the French town across the Channel from England. There's a mob of French scam artists there, jockeying for the tourists - kind of like taxicabs at an airport. He gets around them and goes to find a specific address, which apparently was found by Pancks in some of Casby's papers. It's a gross, beat-up house. He goes up and announces himself as Monsieur Blandois. Miss Wade comes out and is shocked to see Arthur. He apologizes for the false name, and she kind of half-lies about not even knowing who Blandois is, until Arthur says that he saw them talking on the street. The situation is tense. Miss Wade is as cold, stone-faced, and haughty as ever, and Arthur is uncomfortable. Still, he asks her if she knows anything about where Blandois might be, so that he can clear his mother's name. Miss Wade mocks him and wonders what makes him think his mother doesn't have anything to do with the disappearance. She is evasive and things are fishy, but basically she says she has no idea where he is and that she hasn't had any contact with him. She then tells him what she knows: he was some kind of thuggish lowlife that she hired to be "a spy who would fetch and carry for money" . She assumes that if he could have gotten more out of her by killing her, he wouldn't have thought twice about it. Then she asks Arthur why he doesn't ask Gowan about his close friend. Arthur says Gowan has no idea where Blandois is. Miss Wade then announces that she hates Gowan's wife - a lot. Like really, really hates her. Then she says she has written down some of her life history for Arthur to explain what she means by hate. Arthur takes the writing. Then Miss Wade calls in Harriet to say hello. Harriet has no info about Blandois either but asks about the Meagleses. Arthur says they are doing well, and in turns asks her if she really went by their cottage that time the servant saw her. Miss Wade is all, no way! But Harriet says, way. She also says that she didn't go to gloat over her old masters, but went because sometimes she misses them. Miss Wade is all, you are almost a pet dog then and should go back to them if you miss their money so much. She and Harriet have bitter words back and forth and both clearly just spend their days tearing each other down. It's all very dysfunctional, and it's still unclear if they are lovers, or if Harriet is now Miss Wade's adopted daughter, or servant, or what on earth is going on. Arthur has had enough of them, leaves, and gets back on the boat to go back to England. On the boat, he reads the pages Miss Wade gave him.


prompt:
Chapter: I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have
detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have
been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the
truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.

My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady
who represented that relative to me, and who took that title on herself.
She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a little fool--had
no suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her
house, and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number,
    including me. We all lived together and were educated together.

    I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how
    determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan.
    There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the
            first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an
    insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this down
    as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them
    quarrel with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to
    come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. I tried them over
    and over again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were
    always forgiving me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of
    grown people!

    One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a
    passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember
    without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they
    called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute,
    and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I
    believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that
    she did it purposely to wound and gall me!

    Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy
    by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and disgraced for what
    was called 'trying her;' in other words charging her with her little
    perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her
    heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with
    her for the holidays.

    She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of
    cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out
    to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my
    love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of her--and
    so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar and endearing with them
    all--and so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone in
    our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of
    her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and
    then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as
    ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold
    her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still
    hold her after we were both dead.

    It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt
    who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but
    I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one
    girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her
    eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked
    compassionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I
    came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of
            my false young friend) had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt
    speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the
    leaves, and listened.

    The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this
    must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

    Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to
    death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she
    tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what
    I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to
    what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and
    weeping (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear
    aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try
    hard to make it better; we all try hard.'

    Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble
    instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by
    replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything,
    and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and
    useless distress than even so good an effort justifies.'

    The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
    prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another word
    to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I will
    walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my supposed
    grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my education
    somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any one of them
    came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing myself into the fire,
    rather than I would endure to look at their plotting faces.

    I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair
    words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of
    themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before
    I left them, I learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised
    relation. I carried the light of that information both into my past
    and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people
    triumphed over me, when they made a pretence of treating me with
    consideration, or doing me a service.

    A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be
    a governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of a poor
    nobleman, where there were two daughters--little children, but the
    parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The
    mother was young and pretty. From the first, she made a show of behaving
    to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew
    very well that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my
    Mistress, and might have behaved differently to her servant if it had
    been her fancy.

    I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not
    gratifying her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take wine,
    I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she
    always sent it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected
    dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a sharp retort, and
    made me feel independent.

    I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to
    attach themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in the house, a
    rosy-faced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and
    good-humoured, who had nursed them both, and who had secured their
    affections before I saw them. I could almost have settled down to my
    fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for keeping herself before
    the children in constant competition with me, might have blinded many
    in my place; but I saw through them from the first. On the pretext of
    arranging my rooms and waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all
            of which she did busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her
    many subtleties was her feint of seeking to make the children fonder of
    me. She would lead them to me and coax them to me. 'Come to good Miss
    Wade, come to dear Miss Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you
    very much. Miss Wade is a clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and
    can tell you far better and more interesting stories than I know. Come
    and hear Miss Wade!' How could I engage their attentions, when my heart
    was burning against these ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I
    saw their innocent faces shrinking away, and their arms twining round
    her neck, instead of mine? Then she would look up at me, shaking their
    curls from her face, and say, 'They'll come round soon, Miss Wade;
    they're very simple and loving, ma'am; don't be at all cast down about
    it, ma'am'--exulting over me!

    There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw that she
    had safely plunged me into a black despondent brooding by these means,
    she would call the attention of the children to it, and would show them
    the difference between herself and me. 'Hush! Poor Miss Wade is not
    well. Don't make a noise, my dears, her head aches. Come and comfort
    her. Come and ask her if she is better; come and ask her to lie down. I
    hope you have nothing on your mind, ma'am. Don't take on, ma'am, and be
    sorry!'

    It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one day when
    I was alone, and at the height of feeling that I could support it no
    longer, I told her I must go. I could not bear the presence of that
    woman Dawes.

    'Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for you!'

    I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only
    answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must go.

    'I hope, Miss Wade,' she returned, instantly assuming the tone of
    superiority she had always so thinly concealed, 'that nothing I have
    ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of
    that disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been wholly inadvertent
    on my part. Pray tell me what it is.'

    I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to
    my Mistress; but I must go.

    She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand
    on mine. As if that honour would obliterate any remembrance!

    'Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no
    influence.'

    I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, 'I
    have an unhappy temper, I suppose.'

    'I did not say that.'

    'It is an easy way of accounting for anything,' said I.

    'It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something
    very different. My husband and I have exchanged some remarks upon the
    subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy
    with us.'

    'Easy? Oh! You are such great people, my lady,' said I.

    'I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaning--and
    evidently does--quite opposite to my intention.' (She had not expected
            my reply, and it shamed her.) 'I only mean, not happy with us. It is
    a difficult topic to enter on; but, from one young woman to another,
    perhaps--in short, we have been apprehensive that you may allow some
    family circumstances of which no one can be more innocent than yourself,
    to prey upon your spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to make them
    a cause of grief. My husband himself, as is well known, formerly had a
    very dear sister who was not in law his sister, but who was universally
    beloved and respected--'

    I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the dead woman,
    whoever she was, and to have that boast of me and advantage of me; I
    saw, in the nurse's knowledge of it, an encouragement to goad me as
    she had done; and I saw, in the children's shrinking away, a vague
    impression, that I was not like other people. I left that house that
    night.

    After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are not to
    the present purpose, I entered another family where I had but one pupil:
    a girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents here were
    elderly people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom they had
    brought up was a frequent visitor at the house, among many other
    visitors; and he began to pay me attention. I was resolute in repulsing
    him; for I had determined when I went there, that no one should pity me
    or condescend to me. But he wrote me a letter. It led to our being
    engaged to be married.

    He was a year younger than I, and young-looking even when that allowance
    was made. He was on absence from India, where he had a post that was
    soon to grow into a very good one. In six months we were to be married,
    and were to go to India. I was to stay in the house, and was to be
    married from the house. Nobody objected to any part of the plan.

    I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would. Vanity
    has nothing to do with the declaration, for his admiration worried me.
    He took no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among the rich people
    as if he had bought me for my looks, and made a show of his purchase to
    justify himself. They appraised me in their own minds, I saw, and were
    curious to ascertain what my full value was. I resolved that they
    should not know. I was immovable and silent before them; and would have
    suffered any one of them to kill me sooner than I would have laid myself
    out to bespeak their approval.

    He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and it was
    because I did and meant to do so to the last, that I would not stoop to
    propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked, when I added
    that I wished he would not parade his attachment before them; but he
    said he would sacrifice even the honest impulses of his affection to my
    peace.

    Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour together, he
    would keep at a distance from me, talking to any one rather than to me.
    I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening, while he conversed with
    his young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all the while, in people's eyes,
    that they thought the two looked nearer on an equality than he and I.
    I have sat, divining their thoughts, until I have felt that his young
    appearance made me ridiculous, and have raged against myself for ever
    loving him.

    For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as he thought
    of all these agonies that it cost me--agonies which should have made him
    wholly and gratefully mine to his life's end--I loved him. I bore with
    his cousin's praising him to my face, and with her pretending to think
    that it pleased me, but full well knowing that it rankled in my breast;
    for his sake. While I have sat in his presence recalling all my slights
    and wrongs, and deliberating whether I should not fly from the house at
    once and never see him again--I have loved him.

    His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately,
    wilfully, added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to
    expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the
    establishment we should keep, and the company we should entertain when
    he got his advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced way of
    pointing out the contrast my married life was to present to my then
    dependent and inferior position. I suppressed my indignation; but I
    showed her that her intention was not lost upon me, and I repaid her
    annoyance by affecting humility. What she described would surely be
    a great deal too much honour for me, I would tell her. I was afraid
    I might not be able to support so great a change. Think of a mere
    governess, her daughter's governess, coming to that high distinction! It
    made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy, when I answered in this way.
    They knew that I fully understood her.

    It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when
    I was most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in caring as
    little as he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I
    underwent on his account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared
    at the house. He had been intimate there for a long time, but had been
    abroad. He understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood
    me.

    He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood
    me. He was not in the house three times before I knew that he
    accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all
    of them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly.
    In his light protestations of admiration of my future husband, in his
    enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful
    congratulations on our future wealth and his despondent references to
    his own poverty--all equally hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery--I
    saw it clearly. He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and
    more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded
    me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit
    it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own. He was like the
    dressed-up Death in the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his
    arm, whether it was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced
    with it, sang with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it
    ghastly.

    You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me,
    he really condoled with me; that when he soothed me under my vexations,
    he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my
    'faithful swain' to be 'the most loving young fellow in the world, with
    the tenderest heart that ever beat,' he touched my old misgiving that
    I was made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They
    were acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed
    my own knowledge. I soon began to like the society of your dear friend
    better than any other.

    When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing
    out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not been subject
    to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know
    what it was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted
    that he should feel keenly, and I hoped he did. More than that. He was
    tame in comparison with Mr Gowan, who knew how to address me on equal
    terms, and how to anatomise the wretched people around us.

    This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself to speak
    to me. It was scarcely worth alluding to; she knew I meant nothing; but
    she suggested from herself, knowing it was only necessary to suggest,
    that it might be better if I were a little less companionable with Mr
    Gowan.

    I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could always
    answer, she replied, for my meaning nothing wrong. I thanked her,
    but said I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her other
    servants would probably be grateful for good characters, but I wanted
    none.

    Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she knew that
    it was only necessary for her to make a suggestion to me, to have it
    obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I was not bought,
    body and soul. She seemed to think that her distinguished nephew had
    gone into a slave-market and purchased a wife.

    It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to which it did
    come, but she brought it to its issue at once. She told me, with assumed
    commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On this repetition of the
    old wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but exposed to her all I had
    known of her and seen in her, and all I had undergone within myself
    since I had occupied the despicable position of being engaged to her
    nephew. I told her that Mr Gowan was the only relief I had had in my
    degradation; that I had borne it too long, and that I shook it off too
    late; but that I would see none of them more. And I never did.

    Your dear friend followed me to my retreat, and was very droll on the
    severance of the connection; though he was sorry, too, for the excellent
    people (in their way the best he had ever met), and deplored the
    necessity of breaking mere house-flies on the wheel. He protested before
    long, and far more truly than I then supposed, that he was not worth
    acceptance by a woman of such endowments, and such power of character;
    but--well, well--!

    Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it suited
    his inclinations; and then reminded me that we were both people of the
    world, that we both understood mankind, that we both knew there was no
    such thing as romance, that we were both prepared for going different
    ways to seek our fortunes like people of sense, and that we both foresaw
    that whenever we encountered one another again we should meet as the
    best friends on earth. So he said, and I did not contradict him.

    It was not very long before I found that he was courting his present
    wife, and that she had been taken away to be out of his reach. I hated
    her then, quite as much as I hate her now; and naturally, therefore,
    could desire nothing better than that she should marry him. But I was
    restlessly curious to look at her--so curious that I felt it to be one
    of the few sources of entertainment left to me. I travelled a little:
    travelled until I found myself in her society, and in yours. Your dear
    friend, I think, was not known to you then, and had not given you any of
    those signal marks of his friendship which he has bestowed upon you.

    In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of whose
    position there was a singular likeness to my own, and in whose character
    I was interested and pleased to see much of the rising against swollen
    patronage and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection,
    benevolence, and other fine names, which I have described as inherent in
    my nature. I often heard it said, too, that she had 'an unhappy temper.'
    Well understanding what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting
    a companion with a knowledge of what I knew, I thought I would try to
    release the girl from her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no
    occasion to relate that I succeeded.

    We have been together ever since, sharing my small means.

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

completion: OK, so get ready, folks - Miss Wade is a doozy and a half. It's actually hard to know how to even characterize what she is saying, so we'll let a bunch of this summary happen in her own words. For now, let's just begin at the beginning, like she does. She grows up with a woman she thinks is her grandma, in a boarding school with a bunch of other girls. The other girls are always super-nice to her because she's an orphan. She notices this and deliberately tries to pick fights, which they try to avoid. She takes their niceness as a deliberate condescending insult. Um, OK. There's one girl that is her BFF. But the girl is friends with everyone and Miss Wade takes it personally whenever this girl interacts with anyone else. One time she goes home with her for the holidays, where this weird, ambiguous thing happens: She tormented my love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to drive me wild with jealousy. When we were left alone in our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still hold her after we were both dead. So, OK. Is this some kind of incipient homosexuality trying to come out? Is Miss Wade just really possessive? Plain-old crazy? It's hard to know. Keep some things in mind: back then, people were not described as being gay. Homosexuality wasn't an identity; it was just a sexual act. At the same time, there was a lot more PDA between women. Friends slept in the same bed together and wrote each other letters that are full of passionate declarations of love that to us sound totally romantic and sexual but were not seen that way at the time. There was just a lot more space to be expressive about different kinds of love, not just romantic love. Nowadays, a lot of smart people think Miss Wade is gay, and a lot of other smart people think she's just crazy. So... hard to know. In any case, Miss Wade kicks herself out of the girl's house when the girl doesn't defend her to an aunt. Miss Wade finds out that the woman she thought was grandma was no grandma at all, and that she has no info at all about who she is. She also learns about the trust fund Casby is keeping for her, and decides to become a governess. The first place she goes to work seems to have it all: a nice young mom, two nice little girls, and a warm, affectionate nursemaid. Everyone tries to be really nice to her. But here is how Miss Wade reads the situation: the mom is being nice on purpose to point out her power - after all, if she wanted to, she could be super-mean instead. The nursemaid is trying to teach the children to hate Miss Wade by pretending to like her. Or something. It's really insane. Finally Miss Wade snaps, tells off the nice mom, and leaves to go to governess situation #2. At the second place everything is even better. There, her student has a cousin Miss Wade's age, who falls madly in love with her and they get engaged. Awesome, right? No. Miss Wade claims that he is so into her looks that she feels like he's buying her. Also, whenever his mom talks about how nice their life together will be, Miss Wade thinks that this is meant to be an insult about her life now. At that point, she meets Gowan. Oh, Gowan! Gowan, who never thinks that anything is good or worthwhile or of value is the perfect person for Miss Wade. Everything he says sounds awesome to her. Again, in her own words: "He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own" . Well, certainly sounds like a charmer - exactly the kind of guy to bring home to mom and dad. She takes up with Gowan, flaunting it in the face of her fiance. Finally, the fiance's mom speaks to her and the engagement is broken off. Miss Wade and Gowan have a relationship - pretty clearly a sexual one - for a little while. Then he dumps her and goes after Pet Meagles. Miss Wade then travels around a little bit and runs into Pet and Arthur. She then finds and rescues Tattycoram, a young woman who seems to have some of the same traits as Miss Wade.


prompt:
Chapter: Arthur Clennam had made his unavailing expedition to Calais in the midst
of a great pressure of business. A certain barbaric Power with valuable
possessions on the map of the world, had occasion for the services of
one or two engineers, quick in invention and determined in execution:
practical men, who could make the men and means their ingenuity
perceived to be wanted out of the best materials they could find
at hand; and who were as bold and fertile in the adaptation of such
materials to their purpose, as in the conception of their purpose
itself. This Power, being a barbaric one, had no idea of stowing away
a great national object in a Circumlocution Office, as strong wine is
hidden from the light in a cellar until its fire and youth are gone,
       and the labourers who worked in the vineyard and pressed the grapes are
       dust. With characteristic ignorance, it acted on the most decided and
       energetic notions of How to do it; and never showed the least respect
       for, or gave any quarter to, the great political science, How not to do
       it. Indeed it had a barbarous way of striking the latter art and mystery
       dead, in the person of any enlightened subject who practised it.

       Accordingly, the men who were wanted were sought out and found; which
       was in itself a most uncivilised and irregular way of proceeding. Being
       found, they were treated with great confidence and honour (which again
               showed dense political ignorance), and were invited to come at once and
       do what they had to do. In short, they were regarded as men who meant to
       do it, engaging with other men who meant it to be done.

       Daniel Doyce was one of the chosen. There was no foreseeing at that time
       whether he would be absent months or years. The preparations for his
       departure, and the conscientious arrangement for him of all the details
       and results of their joint business, had necessitated labour within a
       short compass of time, which had occupied Clennam day and night. He
       had slipped across the water in his first leisure, and had slipped as
       quickly back again for his farewell interview with Doyce.

       Him Arthur now showed, with pains and care, the state of their gains and
       losses, responsibilities and prospects. Daniel went through it all
       in his patient manner, and admired it all exceedingly. He audited the
       accounts, as if they were a far more ingenious piece of mechanism than
       he had ever constructed, and afterwards stood looking at them, weighing
       his hat over his head by the brims, as if he were absorbed in the
       contemplation of some wonderful engine.

       'It's all beautiful, Clennam, in its regularity and order. Nothing can
       be plainer. Nothing can be better.'

       'I am glad you approve, Doyce. Now, as to the management of your capital
       while you are away, and as to the conversion of so much of it as the
       business may need from time to time--' His partner stopped him.

       'As to that, and as to everything else of that kind, all rests with you.
       You will continue in all such matters to act for both of us, as you
       have done hitherto, and to lighten my mind of a load it is much relieved
       from.'

       'Though, as I often tell you,' returned Clennam, 'you unreasonably
       depreciate your business qualities.'

       'Perhaps so,' said Doyce, smiling. 'And perhaps not. Anyhow, I have a
       calling that I have studied more than such matters, and that I am better
       fitted for. I have perfect confidence in my partner, and I am satisfied
       that he will do what is best. If I have a prejudice connected with money
       and money figures,' continued Doyce, laying that plastic workman's thumb
       of his on the lapel of his partner's coat, 'it is against speculating.
       I don't think I have any other. I dare say I entertain that prejudice,
       only because I have never given my mind fully to the subject.'

       'But you shouldn't call it a prejudice,' said Clennam. 'My dear Doyce,
       it is the soundest sense.'

       'I am glad you think so,' returned Doyce, with his grey eye looking kind
       and bright.

       'It so happens,' said Clennam, 'that just now, not half an hour before
       you came down, I was saying the same thing to Pancks, who looked in
       here. We both agreed that to travel out of safe investments is one of
       the most dangerous, as it is one of the most common, of those follies
       which often deserve the name of vices.'

       'Pancks?' said Doyce, tilting up his hat at the back, and nodding with
       an air of confidence. 'Aye, aye, aye! That's a cautious fellow.'

       'He is a very cautious fellow indeed,' returned Arthur. 'Quite a
       specimen of caution.'

       They both appeared to derive a larger amount of satisfaction from the
       cautious character of Mr Pancks, than was quite intelligible, judged by
       the surface of their conversation.

       'And now,' said Daniel, looking at his watch, 'as time and tide wait
       for no man, my trusty partner, and as I am ready for starting, bag and
       baggage, at the gate below, let me say a last word. I want you to grant
       a request of mine.'

       'Any request you can make--Except,' Clennam was quick with his
       exception, for his partner's face was quick in suggesting it, 'except
       that I will abandon your invention.'

       'That's the request, and you know it is,' said Doyce.

       'I say, No, then. I say positively, No. Now that I have begun, I will
       have some definite reason, some responsible statement, something in the
       nature of a real answer, from those people.'

       'You will not,' returned Doyce, shaking his head. 'Take my word for it,
       you never will.'

       'At least, I'll try,' said Clennam. 'It will do me no harm to try.'

       'I am not certain of that,' rejoined Doyce, laying his hand persuasively
       on his shoulder. 'It has done me harm, my friend. It has aged me, tired
       me, vexed me, disappointed me. It does no man any good to have his
       patience worn out, and to think himself ill-used. I fancy, even already,
       that unavailing attendance on delays and evasions has made you something
       less elastic than you used to be.'

       'Private anxieties may have done that for the moment,' said Clennam,
       'but not official harrying. Not yet. I am not hurt yet.'

       'Then you won't grant my request?'

       'Decidedly, No,' said Clennam. 'I should be ashamed if I submitted to
       be so soon driven out of the field, where a much older and a much more
       sensitively interested man contended with fortitude so long.'

       As there was no moving him, Daniel Doyce returned the grasp of his hand,
       and, casting a farewell look round the counting-house, went down-stairs
       with him. Doyce was to go to Southampton to join the small staff of
       his fellow-travellers; and a coach was at the gate, well furnished and
       packed, and ready to take him there. The workmen were at the gate to see
       him off, and were mightily proud of him. 'Good luck to you, Mr Doyce!'
       said one of the number. 'Wherever you go, they'll find as they've got a
       man among 'em, a man as knows his tools and as his tools knows, a man
       as is willing and a man as is able, and if that's not a man, where is
       a man!' This oration from a gruff volunteer in the back-ground, not
       previously suspected of any powers in that way, was received with three
       loud cheers; and the speaker became a distinguished character for ever
       afterwards. In the midst of the three loud cheers, Daniel gave them all
       a hearty 'Good Bye, Men!' and the coach disappeared from sight, as if
       the concussion of the air had blown it out of Bleeding Heart Yard.

       Mr Baptist, as a grateful little fellow in a position of trust, was
       among the workmen, and had done as much towards the cheering as a mere
       foreigner could. In truth, no men on earth can cheer like Englishmen,
       who do so rally one another's blood and spirit when they cheer in
       earnest, that the stir is like the rush of their whole history, with all
       its standards waving at once, from Saxon Alfred's downwards. Mr Baptist
       had been in a manner whirled away before the onset, and was taking his
       breath in quite a scared condition when Clennam beckoned him to follow
       up-stairs, and return the books and papers to their places.

       In the lull consequent on the departure--in that first vacuity which
       ensues on every separation, foreshadowing the great separation that
       is always overhanging all mankind--Arthur stood at his desk, looking
       dreamily out at a gleam of sun. But his liberated attention soon
       reverted to the theme that was foremost in his thoughts, and began, for
       the hundredth time, to dwell upon every circumstance that had impressed
       itself upon his mind on the mysterious night when he had seen the man at
       his mother's. Again the man jostled him in the crooked street, again
       he followed the man and lost him, again he came upon the man in the
       court-yard looking at the house, again he followed the man and stood
       beside him on the door-steps.

       'Who passes by this road so late?
       Compagnon de la Majolaine;
       Who passes by this road so late?
       Always gay!'

       It was not the first time, by many, that he had recalled the song of the
       child's game, of which the fellow had hummed this verse while they stood
       side by side; but he was so unconscious of having repeated it audibly,
       that he started to hear the next verse.

       'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
       Compagnon de la Majolaine;
Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
   Always gay!'

   Cavalletto had deferentially suggested the words and tune, supposing him
   to have stopped short for want of more.

   'Ah! You know the song, Cavalletto?'

   'By Bacchus, yes, sir! They all know it in France. I have heard it many
   times, sung by the little children. The last time when it I have heard,'
   said Mr Baptist, formerly Cavalletto, who usually went back to his
   native construction of sentences when his memory went near home, 'is
   from a sweet little voice. A little voice, very pretty, very innocent.
   Altro!'

   'The last time I heard it,' returned Arthur, 'was in a voice quite the
   reverse of pretty, and quite the reverse of innocent.' He said it more
   to himself than to his companion, and added to himself, repeating
   the man's next words. 'Death of my life, sir, it's my character to be
   impatient!'

   'EH!' cried Cavalletto, astounded, and with all his colour gone in a
   moment.

   'What is the matter?'

   'Sir! You know where I have heard that song the last time?'

   With his rapid native action, his hands made the outline of a high hook
   nose, pushed his eyes near together, dishevelled his hair, puffed out
   his upper lip to represent a thick moustache, and threw the heavy end
   of an ideal cloak over his shoulder. While doing this, with a swiftness
   incredible to one who has not watched an Italian peasant, he indicated a
   very remarkable and sinister smile. The whole change passed over him
   like a flash of light, and he stood in the same instant, pale and
   astonished, before his patron.

   'In the name of Fate and wonder,' said Clennam, 'what do you mean? Do
   you know a man of the name of Blandois?'

   'No!' said Mr Baptist, shaking his head.

   'You have just now described a man who was by when you heard that song;
   have you not?'

   'Yes!' said Mr Baptist, nodding fifty times.

   'And was he not called Blandois?'

   'No!' said Mr Baptist. 'Altro, Altro, Altro, Altro!' He could not reject
   the name sufficiently, with his head and his right forefinger going at
   once.

   'Stay!' cried Clennam, spreading out the handbill on his desk. 'Was this
   the man? You can understand what I read aloud?'

   'Altogether. Perfectly.'

   'But look at it, too. Come here and look over me, while I read.'

   Mr Baptist approached, followed every word with his quick eyes, saw
   and heard it all out with the greatest impatience, then clapped his
   two hands flat upon the bill as if he had fiercely caught some noxious
   creature, and cried, looking eagerly at Clennam, 'It is the man! Behold
   him!'

   'This is of far greater moment to me' said Clennam, in great agitation,
   'than you can imagine. Tell me where you knew the man.'

   Mr Baptist, releasing the paper very slowly and with much discomfiture,
   and drawing himself back two or three paces, and making as though he
   dusted his hands, returned, very much against his will:

   'At Marsiglia--Marseilles.'

   'What was he?'

   'A prisoner, and--Altro! I believe yes!--an,' Mr Baptist crept closer
   again to whisper it, 'Assassin!'

   Clennam fell back as if the word had struck him a blow: so terrible
   did it make his mother's communication with the man appear.
   Cavalletto dropped on one knee, and implored him, with a redundancy of
   gesticulation, to hear what had brought himself into such foul company.

   He told with perfect truth how it had come of a little contraband
   trading, and how he had in time been released from prison, and how he
   had gone away from those antecedents. How, at the house of entertainment
   called the Break of Day at Chalons on the Saone, he had been awakened
   in his bed at night by the same assassin, then assuming the name of
   Lagnier, though his name had formerly been Rigaud; how the assassin had
   proposed that they should join their fortunes together; how he held
   the assassin in such dread and aversion that he had fled from him at
   daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing
   the assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he
   had related this, with an emphasis and poise on the word, 'assassin,'
   peculiarly belonging to his own language, and which did not serve to
   render it less terrible to Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet,
   pounced upon the bill again, and with a vehemence that would have been
   absolute madness in any man of Northern origin, cried 'Behold the same
   assassin! Here he is!'

   In his passionate raptures, he at first forgot the fact that he had
   lately seen the assassin in London. On his remembering it, it suggested
   hope to Clennam that the recognition might be of later date than the
   night of the visit at his mother's; but Cavalletto was too exact and
   clear about time and place, to leave any opening for doubt that it had
   preceded that occasion.

   'Listen,' said Arthur, very seriously. 'This man, as we have read here,
   has wholly disappeared.'

   'Of it I am well content!' said Cavalletto, raising his eyes piously. 'A
   thousand thanks to Heaven! Accursed assassin!'

   'Not so,' returned Clennam; 'for until something more is heard of him, I
   can never know an hour's peace.'

   'Enough, Benefactor; that is quite another thing. A million of excuses!'

   'Now, Cavalletto,' said Clennam, gently turning him by the arm, so that
   they looked into each other's eyes. 'I am certain that for the little
   I have been able to do for you, you are the most sincerely grateful of
   men.'

   'I swear it!' cried the other.

   'I know it. If you could find this man, or discover what has become of
   him, or gain any later intelligence whatever of him, you would render
   me a service above any other service I could receive in the world, and
   would make me (with far greater reason) as grateful to you as you are to
   me.'

   'I know not where to look,' cried the little man, kissing Arthur's
   hand in a transport. 'I know not where to begin. I know not where to go.
   But, courage! Enough! It matters not! I go, in this instant of time!'

   'Not a word to any one but me, Cavalletto.'

   'Al-tro!' cried Cavalletto. And was gone with great speed.

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

completion: Forget you, Circumlocution Office, Doyce is taking himself and his engineering awesomeness elsewhere. Namely, to Russia, where they apparently appreciate people who invent useful things. All his things are packed, and Doyce is ready. He leaves Arthur in charge of the money stuff and says that he trusts him completely. The only thing Doyce doesn't want to happen is for Arthur to invest in the stock market. At which point Arthur says this: "My dear Doyce, it is the soundest sense I was saying the same thing to Pancks, who looked in here. We both agreed that to travel out of safe investments is one of the most dangerous, as it is one of the most common, of those follies which often deserve the name of vices." But Doyce is totally in agreement, and they both also agree that Pancks is a trustworthy and no-nonsense kind of guy. Doyce then asks Arthur to give up trying to get the invention dealt with by the Circumlocution Office, but Arthur declines. Aw. The factory workers give Doyce a farewell cheer, and he's off. Back in his room, Arthur starts to think about Blandois again and starts humming a song that Blandois is always singing. Mr. Baptist comes in and overhears him, and they realize they've both heard the same evil man sing this song, though Mr. Baptist has only ever known him as Rigaud and Lagnier. Mr. Baptist tells Arthur about being in prison with the guy, and that he's a murderer. Arthur freaks out - what kind of business is this murderer doing with his mother? Then he asks Mr. Baptist to do his best to find out where Blandois may be. Mr. Baptist owes a lot to Arthur, so he agrees.