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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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956 after a pause, and taking his hand as he spoke. ‘I have made head against many trials; but the misery of another, and such misery, is involved in this one, that I declare to you I am rendered desperate, and know not how to act.’ In truth, it did seem a hopeless case. It was impossible to make any use of such intelligence as Newman Noggs had gleaned, when he lay concealed in the closet. The mere circumstance of the compact between Ralph Nickleby and Gride would not invalidate the marriage, or render Bray averse to it, who, if he did not actually know of the existence of some such understanding, doubtless suspected it. What had been hinted with reference to some fraud on Madeline, had been put, with sufficient obscurity by Arthur Gride, but coming from Newman Noggs, and obscured still further by the smoke of his pocket-pistol, it became wholly unintelligible, and involved in utter darkness. ‘There seems no ray of hope,’ said Nicholas. ‘The greater necessity for coolness, for reason, for consideration, for thought,’ said Newman, pausing at every alternate word, to look anxiously in his friend’s face. ‘Where are the brothers?’ ‘Both absent on urgent business, as they will be for a week to come.’ ‘Is there no way of communicating with them? No way of getting one of them here by tomorrow night?’ ‘Impossible!’ said Nicholas, ‘the sea is between us and them. With the fairest winds that ever blew, to go and return would take three days and nights.’ ‘Their nephew,’ said Newman, ‘their old clerk.’ ‘What could either do, that I cannot?’ rejoined Nicholas. ‘With |
