Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

‘YOU hold your tongue, mother,’ he returned; ‘least said, soonest mended.’

‘But, my Ury — ’

‘Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?’

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off.

The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done — all this time being desperate too, and at his wits’