she added, looking at her visitor with the proud intolerant air with which she had begun, ‘no injury?’

While I heard and saw the mother as she said these words, I seemed to hear and see the son, defying them.

All that I had ever seen in him of an unyielding, wilful spirit, I saw in her. All the understanding that I had now of his misdirected energy, became an understanding of her character too, and a perception that it was, in its strongest springs, the same.

She now observed to me, aloud, resuming her former restraint, that it was useless to hear more, or to say more, and that she begged to put an end to the interview. She rose with an air of dignity to leave the room, when Mr. Peggotty signified that it was needless.