urged Uriah.

‘I had, at one time, certainly,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I — God forgive me — I thought YOU had.’

‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief.

‘I thought, at one time,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you wished to send Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.’

‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor. ‘To give Annie pleasure, by making some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.’

‘So I found,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I couldn’t doubt it, when you told me so. But I thought — I implore you to remember the narrow construction which has been my besetting sin — that, in a case where there was so much disparity in point of years — ’