‘It has been the theme of general comment, Mr. Snitchey,’ said Mrs. Snitchey. ‘I hope the office is satisfied.’ ‘Satisfied with what, my dear?’ asked Mr. Snitchey. ‘With the exposure of a defenceless woman to ridicule and remark,’ returned his wife. ‘That is quite in the way of the office, _that_ is.’ ‘I really, myself,’ said Mrs. Craggs, ‘have been so long accustomed to connect the office with everything opposed to domesticity, that I am glad to know it as the avowed enemy of my peace. There is something honest in that, at all events.’ ‘My dear,’ urged Mr. Craggs, ‘your good opinion is invaluable, but _I_ never avowed that the office was the enemy of your peace.’ ‘No,’ said Mrs. Craggs, ringing a perfect peal upon the little bells. ‘Not you, indeed. You wouldn’t be worthy of the office, if you had the candour to.’ ‘As to my having been away to-night, my dear,’ said Mr. Snitchey, giving her his arm, ‘the deprivation has been mine, I’m sure; but, as Mr. Craggs knows—’ Mrs. Snitchey cut this reference very short by hitching her husband to a distance, and asking him to look at that man. To do her the favour to look at him! ‘At which man, my dear?’ said Mr. Snitchey. ‘Your chosen companion; _I_’m no companion to you, Mr. Snitchey.’ ‘Yes, yes, you are, my dear,’ he interposed. ‘No, no, I’m not,’ said Mrs. Snitchey with a majestic smile. ‘I know my station. Will you look at your chosen companion, Mr. Snitchey; at your referee, at the keeper of your secrets, at the man you trust; at your other self, in short?’ The habitual association of Self with Craggs, occasioned Mr. Snitchey to look in that direction. ‘If you can look that man in the eye this night,’ said Mrs. Snitchey, ‘and not know that you are deluded, practised upon, made the victim of his arts, and bent down prostrate to his will by some unaccountable fascination which it is impossible to explain and against which no warning of mine is of the least avail, all I can say is—I pity you!’ At the very same moment Mrs. Craggs was oracular on the cross subject. Was it possible, she said, that Craggs could so blind himself to his Snitcheys, as not to feel his true position? Did he mean to say that he had seen his Snitcheys come into that room, and didn’t plainly see that there was reservation, cunning, treachery, in the man? Would he tell her that his very action, when he wiped his forehead and looked so stealthily about him, didn’t show that there was something weighing on the conscience of his precious Snitcheys (if he had a conscience), that wouldn’t bear the light? Did anybody but his Snitcheys come to festive entertainments like a burglar?—which, by the way, was hardly a clear illustration of the case, as he had walked in very mildly at the door. And would he still assert to her at noon-day (it being nearly midnight), that his Snitcheys were to be justified through thick and thin, against all facts, and reason, and experience?