He's always talking about appreciating, till I hate the sound of the word.

How any woman can go on so after a man that behaves as he does! but we're all soft fools, I'm afraid, Doctor Thurnall." And Clara began a languishing look or two across the counter, which made Tom answer to an imaginary Doctor Heale, whom he heard calling from within.
"Yes, Doctor! coming this moment, Doctor! Good-bye, Miss Clara.

I must hear more next time; you may trust me, you know; secret as the grave, and always your friend, and your lady's too, if you will allow me to do myself such an honour.

Coming, Doctor!" And Tom bolted through the glass door, till Miss Clara was safe on her way up the street.
"Very well," said Tom to himself.

"Knowledge is power: but how to use it?
To get into Mrs.Vavasour's confidence, and show an inclination to take her part against her husband?
If she be a true woman, she would order me out of the house on the spot, as surely as a fish-wife would fall tooth and nail on me as a base intruder, if I dared to interfere with her sacred right of being beaten by her husband when she chooses.
No; I must go straight to John Briggs himself, and bind him over to keep the peace; and I think I know the way to do it." So Tom pondered over many plans in his head that day; and then went to Trebooze, and saw the sick child, and sat down to dinner, where his host talked loud about the Treboozes of Trebooze, who fought in the Spanish Armada--or against it; and showed an unbounded belief in the greatness and antiquity of his family, combined with a historic accuracy about equal to that of a good old dame of those parts, who used to say "her family comed over the water, that she knew; but whether it were with the Conqueror, or whether it were wi' Oliver, she couldn't exactly say!" Then he became great on the subject of old county families in general, and poured out all the vials of his wrath on "that confounded upstart of a Newbroom, Lord Minchampstead," supplanting all the fine old blood in the country--"Why, sir, that Pentremochyn, and Carcarrow moors too (-- good shooting there, there used to be), they ought to be mine, sir, if every man had his rights!" And then followed a long story; and a confused one withal, for by this time Mr.Trebooze had drunk a great deal too much wine, and as he became aware of the fact, became proportionately anxious that Tom should drink too much also; out of which story Tom picked the plain facts, that Trebooze's father had mortgaged Pentremochyn estate for more than its value, and that Lord Minchampstead had foreclosed; while some equally respectable uncle, or cousin, just deceased, had sold the reversion of Carcarrow to the same mighty Cotton Lord twenty years before.