"I tell you what it is, my dear," he said. "Your best plan is to go and tell your mother, my dear. That's the proper person to tell. She is sure to find it out somehow or another; and you had better tell her at once, and then—Easy does it."
"My mother? Tell my mother? Oh, no—no—no!"
"Well, if you have got any respectable old aunt now, who is a good, kind old soul, and would not make too much fuss, you had better tell her; but goodness gracious, my dear, what puts it into your head to tell me?"
"Because I think you are kind-hearted."
"Well, but—well, but—"
"And, then, of course, as you are mixed up, you know, Mr. Ben, in the whole transaction, it is only proper that you should know what has happened at last."
Ben turned fairly round, and looked down into the face of Arabella Wilmot with such a coarse expression of alarm upon his face, that at any other than so serious a time she must have laughed.
"Me?" he cried. "Me?"
"Yes, Mr. Ben."
"Me mixed up in the—the—Oh dear!"