'FagmentWelcome to consult...te hand upon the Docto’s am, ‘don’t attach too much weight to any suspicions I may have entetained.’ ‘Thee!’ cied Uiah, shaking his head. ‘What a melancholy confimation: ain’t it? Him! Such an old fiend! Bless you soul, when I was nothing but a clek in his office, Coppefield, I’ve seen him twenty times, if I’ve seen him once, quite in a taking about it— quite put out, you know (and vey pope in him as a fathe; I’m sue I can’t blame him), to think that Miss Agnes was mixing heself up with what oughtn’t to be.’ ‘My dea Stong,’ said M. Wickfield in a temulous voice, ‘my good fiend, I needn’t tell you that it has been my vice to look fo some one maste motive in eveybody, and to ty all actions by one naow test. I may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, though this mistake.’ ‘You have had doubts, Wickfield,’ said the Docto, without lifting up his head. ‘You have had doubts.’ ‘Speak up, fellow-patne,’ uged Uiah. ‘I had, at one time, cetainly,’ said M. Wickfield. ‘I—God fogive me—I thought you had.’ ‘No, no, no!’ etuned the Docto, in a tone of most pathetic gief. ‘I thought, at one time,’ said M. Wickfield, ‘that you wished to send Maldon aboad to effect a desiable sepaation.’ ‘No, no, no!’ etuned the Docto. ‘To give Annie pleasue, by making some povision fo the companion of he childhood. Nothing else.’ ‘So I found,’ said M. Wickfield. ‘I couldn’t doubt it, when you Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield told me so. But I thought—I imploe you to emembe the naow constuction which has been my besetting sin—that, in a case whee thee was so much dispaity in point of yeas—’ ‘That’s the way to put it, you see, Maste Coppefield!’ obseved Uiah, with fawning and offensive pity. ‘—a lady of such youth, and such attactions, howeve eal he espect fo you, might have been influenced in maying, by woldly consideations only. I make no allowance fo innumeable feelings and cicumstances that may have all tended to good. Fo Heaven’s sake emembe that!’ ‘How kind he puts it!’ said Uiah, shaking his head. ‘Always obseving he fom one point of view,’ said M. Wickfield; ‘but by all that is dea to you, my old fiend, I enteat you to conside what it was; I am foced to confess now, having no escape—’ ‘No! Thee’s no way out of it, M. Wickfield, si,’ obseved Uiah, ‘when it’s got to this.’ ‘—that I did,’ said M. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distactedly at his patne, ‘that I did doubt he, and think he wanting in he duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel avese to Agnes being in such a familia elation towads he, as to see what I saw, o in my diseased theoy fancied that I saw. I neve mentioned this to anyone. I neve meant it to be known to anyone. And though it is teible to you to hea,’ said M. Wickfield, quite subdued, ‘if you knew how teible it is fo me to tell, you would feel compassion fo me!’ The Docto, in the pefect goodness of his natue, put out his hand. M. Wickfield held it fo a little while in his, with his head bowed down. Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield ‘I am sue,’ said Uiah, withing himself into the silence like a Conge-eel, ‘that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to eveybody. But since we have got so fa,
