The man is assaulted, your brother is not to be found; this boy, of whom they speak, goes with him--remember, remember.' 'It is impossible,' said Kate.

'Nicholas!--and a thief too! Mama, how can you sit and hear such statements ?' Poor Mrs Nickleby, who had, at no time, been remarkable for the possession of a very clear understanding, and who had been reduced by the late changes in her affairs to a most complicated state of perplexity, made no other reply to this earnest remonstrance than exclaiming from behind a mass of pocket-handkerchief, that she never could have believed it--thereby most ingeniously leaving her hearers to suppose that she did believe it.
'It would be my duty, if he came in my way, to deliver him up to justice,' said Ralph, 'my bounden duty; I should have no other course, as a man of the world and a man of business, to pursue.

And yet,' said Ralph, speaking in a very marked manner, and looking furtively, but fixedly, at Kate, 'and yet I would not.

I would spare the feelings of his--of his sister.

And his mother of course,' added Ralph, as though by an afterthought, and with far less emphasis.
Kate very well understood that this was held out as an additional inducement to her to preserve the strictest silence regarding the events of the preceding night.