short, does she think that I am in love with her?'

'Delightful embarrassment,' thought Miss Squeers, 'I have brought him to
it, at last. Answer for me, dear,' she whispered to her friend.

'Does she think so?' rejoined Miss Price; 'of course she does.'

'She does!' exclaimed Nicholas with such energy of utterance as might
have been, for the moment, mistaken for rapture.

'Certainly,' replied Miss Price

'If Mr Nickleby has doubted that, 'Tilda,' said the blushing Miss
Squeers in soft accents, 'he may set his mind at rest. His sentiments
are recipro--'

'Stop,' cried Nicholas hurriedly; 'pray hear me. This is the grossest
and wildest delusion, the completest and most signal mistake, that ever
human being laboured under, or committed. I have scarcely seen the
young lady half-a-dozen times, but if I had seen her sixty times, or am
destined to see her sixty thousand, it would be, and will be, precisely
the same. I have not one thought, wish, or hope, connected with her,
unless it be--and I say this, not to hurt her feelings, but to impress
her with the real state of my own--unless it be the one object, dear to
my heart as life itself, of being one day able to turn my back upon
this accursed place, never to set foot in it again, or think of it--even
think of it--but with loathing and disgust.'

With this particularly plain and straightforward declaration, which
he made with all the vehemence that his indignant and excited feelings
could bring to bear upon it, Nicholas waiting to hear no more,
retreated.

But poor Miss Squeers! Her anger, rage, and vexation; the rapid
succession of bitter and passionate feelings that whirled through her
mind; are not to be described. Refused! refused by a teacher, picked
up by advertisement, at an annual salary of five pounds payable at
indefinite periods, and 'found' in food and lodging like the very boys
themselves; and this too in the presence of a little chit of a miller's
daughter of eighteen, who was going to be married, in three weeks' time,
to a man who had gone down on his very knees to ask her. She could have
choked in right good earnest, at the thought of being so humbled.

But, there was one thing clear in the midst of her mortification; and
that was, that she hated and detested Nicholas with all the narrowness
of mind and littleness of purpose worthy a descendant of the house of
Squeers. And there was one comfort too; and that was, that every hour in
every day she cou