“Still I ask you, what is this to me?”

“Your ladyship, I conclude with that.” Mr Guppy rises. “If you think there’s enough, in this chain of circumstances put together — in the undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury — in her having been brought up by Miss Barbary — in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson’s real name to be Hawdon — in your ladyship’s knowing both these names very well — and in Hawdon’s dying as he did — to give your ladyship a family interest in going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don’t know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never had them in my posession yet. I will bring those papers here, as soon as I get them; and go over them for the first time with your ladyship. I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation, if any complaint was made; and all is in strict confidence.”

Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth, of his object and suspicion in coming here; or, if not, what do they hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he can look at the table, and keep that witness-box face of his from telling anything.

“You may bring the letters,” says my Lady, “if you choose.”

“Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,” says Mr Guppy, a little injured.

“You may bring the letters,” she repeats, in the same tone, “if you—please.”

“It shall he done. I wish your ladyship good day.”

On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped like an old strong chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her and unlocks it.

“Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that sort,” says Mr Guppy; “and I couldn’t accept of anything of the kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the same.”

So the young man makes his bow, and goes down-stairs, where the supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.

As Sir Leicester basks in his library, and dozes over his newspaper, is there no influence in the house to startle him; not to say, to make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very portraits frown, the very armour stir?

No. Words, sobs, and cries, are but air; and air is so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town, that sounds need be uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber, to carry any faint vibration to Sir Leicester’s ears; and yet this cry is in the house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.

“O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me; but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!”