Any sight of distress was sure to move the tenderness of Tom, but this
especially. Tears and sobs from her were arrows in his heart. He tried
to comfort her; sat down beside her; expended all his store of homely
eloquence; and spoke in words of praise and hope of Martin. Aye, though
he loved her from his soul with such a self-denying love as woman seldom
wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin. Not the wealth of the rich
Indies would have tempted Tom to shirk one mention of her lover's name.
When she was more composed, she impressed upon Tom that this man she
had described, was Pecksniff in his real colours; and word by word and
phrase by phrase, as well as she remembered it, related what had
passed between them in the wood: which was no doubt a source of high
gratification to that gentleman himself, who in his desire to see and
his dread of being seen, was constantly diving down into the state pew,
and coming up again like the intelligent householder in Punch's Show,
who avoids being knocked on the head with a cudgel. When she had
concluded her account, and had besought Tom to be very distant and
unconscious in his manner towards her after this explanation, and had
thanked him very much, they parted on the alarm of footsteps in the
burial-ground; and Tom was left alone in the church again.
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