“Ah!” He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets, showing that he had been thinking as much. “Now, what do you say about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?”

I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary; but that Prince and I had agreed only that evening, that we would like his opinion to be confirmed by some one.

“Well, you know,” returned my guardian, quickly, “there’s Woodcourt.”

I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment, all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr Woodcourt seemed to come back and confuse me.

“You don’t object to him, little woman?”

“Object to him, guardian? Oh no!”

“And you don’t think the patient would object to him?”

So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a great reliance on him, and to like him very much. I said that he was no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind attendance on Miss Flite.

“Very good,” said my guardian. “He has been here to-day, my dear, and I will see him about it to-morrow.”

I felt, in this short conversation — though I did not know how, for she was quiet, and we interchanged no look — that my dear girl well remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist, when no other hands than Caddy’s had brought me the little parting token. This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House; and that if I avoided that disclosure any longer, I might become less worthy in my own eyes of its master’s love. Therefore, when we went upstairs, and had waited listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday, and to take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John, and the happy life that was in store for for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it, and so comforted by the sense of having done right, in casting this last idle reservation away, that I was ten times happier than I had been before. I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago; but now that it was gone, I felt as if I understood its nature better.

Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone away. Mr Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling’s birthday; and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us that Richard’s absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that day I was for some weeks — eight or nine as I remember — very much with Caddy; and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own illness. She often came to Caddy’s, but our function there was to amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential manner. Whenever I went home at night, we were together; but Caddy’s rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her.

With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love, and their home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying, so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her husband and the comforts of old Mr Turveydrop; I had never known the best of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face and helpless figure should be lying there day after day, where dancing was the business of life; where the kit and the apprentices began early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon.