I must have caught the disposition from him." "Well--go on with your accounting then," I said, assuming an air of resignation.
"That's just it." Marlow fell into his stride at once.

"That's just it.
Mere disappointed cupidity cannot account for the proceedings of the next morning; proceedings which I shall not describe to you--but which I shall tell you of presently, not as a matter of conjecture but of actual fact.
Meantime returning to that evening altercation in deadened tones within the private apartment of Miss de Barral's governess, what if I were to tell you that disappointment had most likely made them touchy with each other, but that perhaps the secret of his careless, railing behaviour, was in the thought, springing up within him with an emphatic oath of relief "Now there's nothing to prevent me from breaking away from that old woman." And that the secret of her envenomed rage, not against this miserable and attractive wretch, but against fate, accident and the whole course of human life, concentrating its venom on de Barral and including the innocent girl herself, was in the thought, in the fear crying within her "Now I have nothing to hold him with.

.

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" I couldn't refuse Marlow the tribute of a prolonged whistle "Phew! So you suppose that.