Grewgious became when he found himself in that
unexpected position), Mr. Crisparkle bore his testimony to Mr.
Jasper's strict sense of justice, and, expressing his absolute
confidence in the complete clearance of his pupil from the least
taint of suspicion, sooner or later, avowed that his confidence in
that young gentleman had been formed, in spite of his confidential
knowledge that his temper was of the hottest and fiercest, and that
it was directly incensed against Mr. Jasper's nephew, by the
circumstance of his romantically supposing himself to be enamoured
of the same young lady. The sanguine reaction manifest in Mr.
Jasper was proof even against this unlooked-for declaration. It
turned him paler; but he repeated that he would cling to the hope
he had derived from Mr. Grewgious; and that if no trace of his dear
boy were found, leading to the dreadful inference that he had been
made away with, he would cherish unto the last stretch of
possibility the idea, that he might have absconded of his own wild
will.
Now, it fell out that Mr. Crisparkle, going away from this
conference still very uneasy in his mind, and very much troubled on
behalf of the young man whom he held as a kind of prisoner in his
own house, took a memorable night walk.
He walked to Cloisterham Weir.
He often did so, and consequently there was nothing remarkable in
his footsteps tending that way. But the preoccupation of his mind
so hindered him from planning any walk, or taking heed of the
objects he passed, that his first consciousness of being near the
Weir, was derived from the sound of the falling water close at
hand.
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