wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn existence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under the watching stars upon a summer night.

“Of repentance or remorse, or any feeling of mine,” Lady Dedlock presently proceeds, “I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears.”

He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with her disdainful hand.

“Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels are all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there. So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had with me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own dress, in order that I might avoid observation. I went, to be henceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other charge with you.”

“Excuse me, Lady Dedlock,” says Mr Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. “I am not sure that I understand you. You want?—”

“To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this hour.”

Mr Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises; but he, without removing hand from chair-back or from old- fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, shakes his head.

“What? Not go as I have said?”

“No, Lady Dedlock,” he very calmly replies.

“Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and who it is?”

“No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means.”

Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in her hand, when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot or raising his voice:

“Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out, before every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it.”

He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else; but when so practised an eye as Mr Tulkinghorn’s sees indecision for a moment in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.

He promptly says again, “Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock,” and motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but he motions again, and she sits down.

“The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady Dedlock; but, as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well-known to you, that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery.”

“Sir,” she returns, without looking up from the ground, on which her eyes are now fixed, “I had better have gone. It would have been far better not to have detained me. I have no more to say.”

“Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear.”


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