“Now, Bella,” said Mr. Boffin, “look before you leap.  Go away, and you can never come back.  And you mustn’t expect that I’m a-going to settle money on you if you leave me like this, because I’m not.  Not one brass farthing.”

“No power on earth could make me take it now,” said Bella haughtily.

Then she broke into sobs over saying good-bye to Mrs. Boffin, said a last word to Mr. Boffin, and ran upstairs.  A few minutes later she went out of the house.

“That was well done,” said Bella when she was in the street, “and now I’ll go and see my dear, darling pa in the city.”

IV.—­The Runaway Marriage

Bella found her way to her father’s office in the city.  It was after hours, and the little man was alone, having tea on a small cottage loaf and a pennyworth of milk, for R. Wilfer was but a clerk on a small income.  He immediately fetched another loaf and another pennyworth of milk, and then, before she could tell him she had left the Boffins, who should come along but John Rokesmith.  And John Rokesmith not only came in, but he caught Bella in his arms, and she was content to leave her head on his breast as if that were her head’s chosen and lasting resting place.

“I knew you would come to him, and I followed you,” said Rokesmith.  “You are mine.”

“Yes, I am yours if you think me worth taking,” Bella responded.

Then Bella’s father had to hear what had happened, and said his daughter had done well.

“To think,” said Wilfer, looking round the office, “that anything of a tender nature should come off here is what tickles me.”

A few weeks later and Bella and her father went out early one morning and took the steamer to Greenwich.  And at Greenwich there was John Rokesmith, and presently in a church John and Bella were joined together in wedlock.

They had been married a year, and lived in a little house at Blackheath.  John Rokesmith went up to the city every day, and explained that he was “in a China house.”  From time to time he would ask her, “Would you like to be rich now, my darling?” and got for answer, “Dear John, am I not rich?”

But for all that a change came in their affairs.  For Mortimer Lightwood, who had met Bella at the Boffins’, seeing her walking with her husband, recognised him as Julius Handford; and as Mr. Inspector had never discovered what became of Mr. Julius Handford, he must needs pay Mr. Rokesmith a visit.  And then it turned out that John Rokesmith was not only Julius Handford, but John Harmon himself, much to Mr. Inspector’s astonishment.

More surprises were to follow, for when John came home next day he told Bella that he had left the China house, and was better off.

“We must have our headquarters in London now, my dear, and there’s a house ready for us.”