"You have been very good to me; so patient, and genial, and frank. No one before has ever been so good. Even if I did not love you, I should say that.
"But I do love you, no one can take that from me: it is my own dignity, the crown of my life. Such a poor life . . . no, no, I won't say that now. I cannot pity myself now . . . no, I cannot . . . ."
The Disagreeable Man stopped writing, and the pen dropped on the table.
He buried his tear-stained face in his hands. He cried his heart out, this Disagreeable Man.
Then he took the letter which he had just been writing, and he tore it into fragments.
END OF PART I.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
THE DUSTING OF THE BOOKS.
IT was now more than three weeks since Bernardine's return to London. She had gone back to her old home, at her uncle's second-hand book-shop. She spent her time in dusting the books, and arranging them in some kind of order; for old Zerviah Holme had ceased to interest himself much in his belongings, and sat in the little inner room reading as usual Gibbon's "History of Rome." Customers might please themselves about coming: Zerviah Holme had never cared about amassing money, and now he cared even less than before. A frugal breakfast, a frugal dinner, a box full of snuff, and a shelf full of Gibbon were the old man's only requirements: an undemanding life, and therefore a loveless one; since the less we ask for, the less we get.