said I.

‘And I have been sitting here,’ said Steerforth, glancing round the room, ‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down, might — to judge from the present wasted air of the place — be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm.

David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!’

‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?’

‘I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!’

There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.