“You’re George’s mother, old lady; that’s about what you are, I believe?” says Mr Bucket, aside, with his hat already on, and buttoning his coat.

“Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother.”

“So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well, then, I’ll tell you something. You needn’t be distressed no more. Your son’s all right. Now, don’t you begin a crying; because what you’ve got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you won’t do that by crying. As to your son, he’s all right, I tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you’re the same. He’s discharged honourable; that’s about what he is; with no more imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a tidy one, I’ll bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he’s a fine-made man, and you’re a fine-made old lady, and you’re a mother and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you’ve trusted to me I’ll go through with. Don’t you be afraid of my turing out of my way, right or left; or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave, ’till I have found what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you better, and these family affairs smoothed over — as, Lord, many other family affairs equally has been, and equally wlll be, to the end of time.”

With this peroration, Mr Bucket; buttoned up, goes quietly out, looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night, in quest of the fugitive.

His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock’s rooms, and look all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr Bucket with a wax-light in his hand, holding it above his head, and taking a sharp mental inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with himself, would be to see a sight — which nobody does see, as he is particular to lock himself in.

“A spicy boudoir, this,” says Mr Bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. “Must have cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must have been hard put to it!”

Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors, and moralizes thereon.

“One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles, and getting myself up for Almack’s,” says Mr Bucket. “I begin to think I must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it.”

Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a white handkerchief.

“Hum! Let’s have a look at you,” says Mr Bucket, putting down the light. “What should you be kept by yourself for? What’s your motive? Are you her ladyship’s property, or somebody else’s? You’ve got a mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?”

He finds it as he speaks, “Esther Summerson.”

“O!” says Mr Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. “Come, I’ll take you.”

He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it, glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir Leicester’s room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be driven to the Shooting Gallery. Mr Bucket does not claim to be a scientific judge of horses; but he lays out a little money on the principal