“I accept it with many thanks,” returned the trooper.
“Do you though, indeed?” said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on good-humouredly. “I’m sure I’m surprised at that. I wonder you don’t starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps you’ll set your mind upon THAT next.” Here she again looked at me, and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns, that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and Mr. Woodcourt, I rose.
“We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George,” said I, “and we shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable.”
“More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can’t find me,” he returned.
“But more persuadable we can, I hope,” said I. “And let me entreat you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last importance to others besides yourself.”
He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure, which seemed to catch his attention all at once.
“’Tis curious,” said he. “And yet I thought so at the time!”
My guardian asked him what he meant.
“Why, sir,” he answered, “when my ill fortune took me to the dead man’s staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like Miss Summerson’s go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak to it.”
For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since and hope I shall never feel again.